In 1955, actor Begley has a late-career triumph playing Matthew Harrison Brady — a stand-in for William Jennings Bryan of the Scopes "Monkey Trial" fame — in Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee's drama Inherit the Wind. When his co-star Paul Muni left the show, Begley rocked Broadway by switching from Brady to playing Muni's part of Clarence Darrow manqu้ Henry Drummond. The stunt earned Begley copious press and praise, and branded him an actor's actor.

Trading leads within the same show is not a trick any actor can pull off. Hence, such incidents, while not unheard of, are rare. The first of the 21st century comes courtesy of Daniels, who is now playing frustrated housewares dealer Michael (created on Broadway by James Gandolfini) in Yasmina Reza's Tony Award-winning comedy, God of Carnage. Daniels was in the original Broadway cast, but playing Alan, the callous, cell-phone-addicted corporate lawyer.

"It seemed like exactly the kind of creative challenge I look for nowadways," said Daniels, who has never "flipped" roles before. "That was one of the draws of it, that it's rare on Broadway."

The idea came from casting director Daniel Swee, who suggested it to producers, who suggested it to director Matthew Warchus. Originally, producers asked Daniels to play Michael in the national tour. When the tour didn't start up as soon as expected, Broadway became the plan.

But there were also some unexpected side effects. "When Dylan [Baker, who now plays shark Alan] starts getting laughs on lines where you never found the laugh, you find you're the only one in the room not laughing. I told him once, 'I did 250 shows, and you just nailed that line.'"

He also noticed something funny in the way director Matthew Warchus did business. Warchus gave Daniels direction that Daniels didn't remember Gandolfini getting. And the director told Dylan Baker things he never told Daniels.

"He's brilliant at taking the actor and finding the strengths and finding the things that the actor is bringing to it, sometimes subconsciously, and fanning that flame," said Daniels. "That's what Matthew does. He reimagines it every time he comes in. He looks at who he's got up there and tailors it to what they do well."

For Warchus, that policy is just natural instinct. "To me that's sort of obvious," said the director, "because you're trying to get two different people to the same point, so you have to take a different route." Continued...