In town with Brian Lane Green

By Jae-Ha Kim
Chicago Sun-Times
January 11, 2002

Brian Lane Green is sitting at a coffee shop not far from his Gold Coast hotel. He is oblivious to the second looks he attracts from other patrons. He’s too busy digging into his bowl of soup.

“When you run around on stage every day wearing a loincloth, you are very conscious of what you eat,” says Green with a laugh. “I have a tendency to be round. Luckily, my muscles have memory, so they pop out during the shows.”

Lane stars in the title role of “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat,” which is running through Feb. 3 at the Royal George Theatre. Saturday evening, he performs a solo cabaret show at Davenport’s Piano Bar & Cabaret. Green’s loincloth won’t be making an appearance there.

“I love to do anything that keeps me creative,” says Green. “Otherwise, it’d be too easy to get bored. I love acting and singing, but if I could only pick one, I’d say music is where my heart is. It’s my fulfillment and my therapy and has been since I was five years old.

“Music and musical theater is such a joy for me, especially something like ‘Joseph.’ I don’t know of anybody who goes to the place I go to with it, and I don’t mean I do it better than them. … I’ve just been forced to … dig deeper and I enjoyed that.”

Green, 39, made his Broadway debut as Huck Finn in “Big River” and received a Tony nomination for his starring role in the musical “Starmites.” But he’s best known to soap opera fans from his popular stints on “Days of Our Lives,” “Another World” and “All My Children.”

SPEAKING OF CHICAGO, GREEN HAD THIS TO SAY:

Favorite restaurant: The Pepper Lounge.
Favorite food: The Pepper Lounge’s portobello mushrooms and this great salad with goat cheese.
Favorite venue: Royal George. It’s very sweet. I played the Arie Crown years ago and it was nice, but just insanely huge.
Favorite bar: The Whiskey.
Favorite area: I like Michigan Avenue, further (north) of Water Tower. It’s beautiful. I love walking all around here.
Favorite shop: French Connection at the Water Tower. The clothes are sweet and not too expensive.
Favorite sports team: Da Bears!
Favorite personality: Oprah.
Most memorable Chicago performance: Opening night, because I had people from all over the country like my mom and stepfather coming in.
Worst Chicago performance: When I sprained my ankle on stage. I’ve done this show over the past six years about 2,000 times in different productions. I have never in my life missed a performance of it and this time I missed 10 shows.
Favorite Chicago comic: Tina Fey of “Saturday Night Live.” She’s the first female head writer for that show and she does the Weekend Update on there. She’s smart, kind of odd, pretty, and has this scar on her face.
Favorite thing to do in your time off here: I’m very boring. I’m not a big shopper or drinker. I’ll sit at home and work on my manuscript.
Favorite Chicago coffeehouse: Corner Bakery. It’s not exactly a coffeehouse, but they have great coffee there. They have great food, too. I love their sugary raisin bread and that salad trio thing.
Favorite Chicago movie theater: Landmark’s Century Centre Cinema. They show the best movies there. I love seeing foreign films because it’s not a passive experience.
The last word on Chicago: Fabulous.