MIKE NICHOLS'S GHOST

In Shubert Alley, which runs between West Forty-fourth and Forty-fifth Streets, Jeremy Irons, dressed in a tweed cap turned backward and three artfully arranged layers of European workwear, pointed to a patch of asphalt beneath the marquee of the Booth Theatre. “This is where I used to argue with the police that I should be allowed to park my motorcycle. But they made me put it in the damn car park up the street,” he said.

- -David Kamp

Irons was reminiscing about his Broadway début, in Tom Stoppard’s “The Real Thing” forty-one years ago. The production was mounted in the Plymouth, next door to the Booth, which is now the Schoenfeld Theatre. “That was my dressing room,” Irons said, pointing to a small window high above the stage door. Pointing to an even smaller window, he said, “That was my loo.” Motioning one flight up, he said, “And that’s where Glenn was.”

Glenn Close was Irons’s costar in “The Real Thing.” It was a bravura production fired by star power, with Mike Nichols directing and the up-and-comers Christine Baranski, Peter Gallagher, and Cynthia Nixon in supporting roles. Stoppard had sought out Irons for the original London production, but he had already committed to a screen adaptation of Ibsen’s “The Wild Duck,” to be filmed in Australia. While there, he received a disquieting bulletin: “I heard that Meryl Streep and Kevin Kline had gone to see the London show. I thought, Well, fuck that. So I called my agent, Robby Lantz, and said, ‘If you don’t get me that role, I’m leaving.’”