From cruise ships to musicals, Gavin Lee puts his best foot forward.

Gavin Lee has danced in cruise shows. He's toured with musicals. He's been an understudy and a replacement and a swing. Now, at 35, he's starring on Broadway, with a sure shot at a Tony for his acclaimed performance in Mary Poppins.

Normally, it would be a little early in the season to be predicting Tony nominations. But no one who's seen Lee as Bert, the role originated by Dick Van Dyke in the classic Disney film, can have any doubts on that score. As the show's narrator, he connects instantly with audiences. His lanky appeal and gift for physical comedy keep all eyes on him even when the main action is elsewhere. And his laid-back singing, stylish dancing, and genial personality warm up a show whose other characters can seem somewhat starchy.

Since the production, derived partly from the 1964 movie and partly from the RL. Travers stories, puts Lee front and center in its biggest, best-remembered numbers, chances are good that he would have earned the Tony buzz in any case. But when he flips himself upside down in "Step in Time" to tap-dance on the proscenium arch, well, what else is there to say? The audience just goes bananas.

Lee says he was as surprised as anyone when, after winning the role in the 2004 London production, he was fitted with a harness. "I couldn't see any point in the script where I did something in the air," he recalls. But one day he was taken to the Prince Edward Theater in the West End to watch a petite aerialist stroll up one side of the proscenium, across the ceiling and then down the other side.

"My jaw hit the floor," he says. And then Cameron Mackintosh, the producer, told him he'd be doing the same thing. "I want to," he replied, "but I don't know if I can."

He'd never been that high. The first few times he tried it, he was terrified. At night, he'd have visions of what would happen if he fell. Finally, he was given an eight-foot tall frame to practice on. "I learned to tap dance there," he says. "It's hard to tap upside down--it's all about gravity. If you do a pullback, you don't land again unless you're pushing into the platform. And that puts more pressure on the wires."

Now, however, he says he's perfectly relaxed doing the number. "It's part of my show. I can hear the audience gasp, and the applause--it's a fantastic feeling." Besides, he adds, 'Tm upside down for less than a minute."

The idea for the stunt came not from Matthew Bourne, who is the co-director with Richard Eyre, but from a conversation between the choreographer, Stephen Mear, and the designer, Bob Crowley. "They were talking about the set for 'Step in Time,' and Stephen told Bob, 'I want them to be able to dance all over it.'" One thing led to another, and before long, the plan was for Lee to dance and sing first parallel to the floor and then suspended above it.

"I love the fact that we had two choreographers on the show," he says. He admits that at first, the cast wondered how it would work. He thought perhaps Mear would choreograph the jazzy numbers and Bourne would do the more balletic ones. As it turned out, everyone worked on everything. "It was such an organic team," Lee says. "Maybe Stephen had more of the steps; Bourne had more of the overall look. And they let me work out my own tap steps. They were very open to letting everyone contribute." Ultimately, he says, having two choreographers helped the show a great deal: "You get the best of both worlds."

Born in London and raised in Suffolk, Lee began dancing when he was about 8. "I was a bit like Mike in A Chorus Line," he says. "My sister went to dance class, and I used to be the annoying younger brother who'd wait for her to come home and show me what she'd done that day. Finally my mother asked my sister if there were any other boys in the class." His training began with disco dancing in the early '80s, and progressed through jazz and tap and, finally, ballet.

"I started ballet very late," he says. "But if you want to do this as a career, you've got to have ballet. It gives you the stamina and the poise to do any of it."

He went on to theater studies in London and work on Princess Cruises. Lee found his cruise experience invaluable. "I always tell students, 'Don't dismiss going on a cruise ship,' "he says. "A lot of them think it's not proper theater work, but if I had gone straight into a big West End show, I would never have danced as much. When you get out of school, you're at your fittest, your peak. And in a West End show, you do one, two if you're lucky, big dance numbers. On the cruise ship, we were never off the stage. It was the best continuation of my training. I learned so much."

After a year, he returned to London and worked steadily--if rather invisibly-in musicals. He was in three of the four shows Susan Stroman has done in London. And then Bert came his way--a stellar part that requires him to sing, dance, and act.

There was a time when a character like Bert could be found in every Broadway musical, and performers like Lee--comic song-and-dance men like Eddie Foy Jr. and Ray Bolger, romantic types like Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly, and either-way guys like Tommy Tune and Dick Van Dyke--never lacked for work. Today, there may be plenty of performers with the chops to fill their shoes, but the opportunities are limited. The just-about universal hosannas that greeted Lee's performance in Mary Poppins are not only a tribute to him--they're also an indication of how much we miss his kind of performing.

Sylviane Gold has written on theater for Newsday and The New York Times.