ROLES OF A LIFETIME JOE MANTEGNA BRINGS MEMORABLE MEN TO STAGE AND SCREEN.

Byline: Evan Henerson Theater Writer

An actor on stage can never truly ``own'' a role. Someone puts up a new production and a different performer gives a character vastly different shadings.

Nobody knows this better than Joe Mantegna, starring in the play ``Trumbo: Red, White and Blacklisted.'' Nearly 20 years ago, the largely unknown Chicago actor won a Tony award for playing real-estate shark Richard Roma in ``Glengarry Glen Ross,'' the Pulitzer Prize-winning play by David Mamet. Mantegna played the role for more than a year and a half on Broadway and during a four-city tour that stopped at L.A.'s Henry Fonda Theatre.

Roma opened several doors, and prominent filmmakers like Woody Allen (who cast Mantegna in ``Celebrity'' and ``Alice'') and Francis Ford Coppola (``The Godfather: Part III'') came calling. Mantegna has enjoyed a busy film and TV career ever since, most recently culminating in a two-season run on the CBS series ``Joan of Arcadia.'' He earned Emmy nominations for ``The Last Don'' and ``The Rat Pack,'' and directed the film version of Mamet's ``Lakeboat.''

And Roma lived on, too. When Liev Schreiber won the identical Tony award for playing Roma in ``Glengarry's'' 2003 Broadway revival, Mantegna sent the younger actor a congratulatory note, but Mantegna never saw the performance. He hasn't watched Al Pacino's turn as Roma in the 1992 film adaptation of ``Glengarry'' either.

``I watched the movie for about five minutes, and then I turned it off because I realized there's no point. It wasn't entertaining,'' says Mantegna, adding a hearty no disrespect to any Romas past and future. ``That role, that piece, is the most seminal piece for me. That's what changed my career and my life as an actor, and I'm so attached to that character.

``When I see another one, it's not that I can't appreciate it. I'm sure they all do wonderful jobs,'' he continues. ``I'm not trying to be comparative, but the memory I want to have is what we did. Because the satisfaction for me in performing is the performing. The audience makes the judgment of whether they like it or not.''

Mantegna says these words, fittingly, from the inside of a playhouse - Burbank's Falcon Theatre, where he has just returned to the stage in the ultimate rent-a-role, blacklisted screenwriter Dalton Trumbo. The theater is located practically a stone's throw from the actor's home and from the restaurant Taste Chicago, operated by Mantegna and his wife, Arlene.

Written by Trumbo's son Christopher and directed by Peter Askin, ``Trumbo'' is a series of letters and speeches read - script in hand - by a single actor and covering topics ranging from American values to masturbation. A second actor plays the narrator.

During an extended run at New York's Westside Theatre in 2003, ``Trumbo'' featured a rotating cast of actors employing Trumbo's signature wit and principles. Nathan Lane, Chris Cooper, Charles Durning, Michael Richards, Gore Vidal and Richard Dreyfuss were among the Trumbos.

``You can imagine the enormous variation,'' says Christopher Trumbo. ``Luckily (my father) never read the letters (aloud), so I didn't have anything to compare it with. Because our narrative form is in letters, our hope is to bring out whatever the actor has to give, given the kinds of letters he's reading. It becomes his interpretation that rules the course of the evening.''

Christopher Trumbo estimates that he's seen perhaps a dozen Trumbos. Mantegna, who performs the entire run at the Falcon, has seen none, although Dalton Trumbo was hardly a stranger to him.

The actor's initial ``connection'' to Trumbo came through seeing the 1971 film ``Johnny Got His Gun,'' and of course Mantegna knew of Trumbo's history. One of the legendary ``Hollywood Ten,'' Trumbo was imprisoned for refusing to name names in front of Sen. Joseph McCarthy's House Un-American Activities Committee. He later moved to Mexico and, to get around the blacklist, wrote under pseudonyms. It was under the name Robert Rich that Trumbo won his second best-screenplay Oscar, for ``The Brave One.''

``This guy was one of those icons, like the Chicago Seven,'' says Mantegna. ``Like it says in the piece: It probably helped that he had a name like Dalton Trumbo. You don't forget that. He was the right guy with the right name and the right cause.''

Mantegna contends actors today work in an age when people take considerably more interest in an artist's private life. ``I think I understand more what it must have been like,'' he says. ``I know what the process is, and while it's changed somewhat, you can still kind of imagine.

``Most actors don't live fairly private lives. People like Paris Hilton, you know more about their private life than you do about their commercial life, whereas back then, it was the opposite,'' he continues. ``They didn't have People magazine and 'Extra.' To see these guys as just citizens, seeing where they stood, who thought what and who sided with whom, that's kind of interesting.''

``Trumbo'' is Mantegna's first lengthy engagement on stage since the Broadway run of Mamet's ``Speed-the-Plow'' in the late 1980s. With his two daughters now teenagers, he figures to take on more stage work and, possibly, another TV series in the years to come.

The demise of ``Joan of Arcadia'' after two seasons still rankles Mantegna, who wishes the well-regarded family series could have been given a chance in a better time slot than Friday nights.

``I should only hope, if I get another chance around the block with something like that, that I could find something I'd be equally proud of, equally excited about,'' he says. ``Of course, saying that, I'll get a call today where they'll say, 'We're doing ``CSI: Chicago.'' You want to do it?' Chicago, my home town? 'Why not?' ''

Evan Henerson, [phone]

evan.henerson(at)dailynews.com

TRUMBO: RED, WHITE AND BLACKLISTED

Where: Falcon Theatre, 4252 Riverside Drive, Burbank.

When: 8 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday, 4 p.m. Sunday; through Nov. 13.

Tickets: $30 to $37.50. [phone].

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Photo:

no caption (Joe Mantegna)

Evan Yee/Staff Photographer