Hail king Kevin

On Broadway

THREE years after winning glowing reviews for his portrayal of Falstaff in "Henry IV" at Lincoln Center, Kevin Kline is making a run at another great role from the Bard: King Lear.

Last week, Kline took part in a hush-hush staged reading of "King Lear," directed by James Lapine at the Public Theater.

The reading was off-limits to all but a handful of Kline's friends and Public Theater staffers, but someone who was there said the actor was excellent.

"They did it with scripts, but he'd obviously memorized a lot of it," the source says. "It was done just to see if Kevin was comfortable in the part. I'd say he was."

Sources say Lapine, who directed the hit musical "The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee," also was pleased.

Kline has committed to do a Shakespeare play for the Public this season, and "Lear" seems a natural choice.

But a theater executive who knows the actor well says: "Now the Public will have to wait six months for Kevin to decide whether he wants to do it."

The actor turns down so many roles, his nickname in theater circles is Kevin De-Kline.

That said, he's done a number of Shakespeare plays for the Public, including "Measure for Measure," "Much Ado About Nothing," "Richard III" and two productions of "Hamlet."

JONATHAN Pryce, the acclaimed star of "Dirty Rotten Scoundrels," has won the day: The Tony Award for Best Performance in a Re-Created Role, a new prize this year, has been scrapped.

Pryce savaged the replacement Tony last month in The Post after Tony officials announced that, while both he and Harvey Fierstein ("Fiddler on the Roof") had been nominated, no award would be made.

"I found it ultimately insulting to all of us who were eligible," Pryce said at the time.

Fierstein called it a "creepy award" because it was "a backhanded slap at the person you replaced."

The Tony Award Administration Committee last week voted unanimously to abandon it.

"What was intended as something positive turned out to be negative," says a member of the committee. "And the theater does not need a negative award."

The prize was nicknamed the Reba McEntire Award after the country star who took over for Bernadette Peters in "Annie Get Your Gun" in 1999 and elevated a mediocre revival into a smash hit.

Producers thought the possibility of winning a Tony would entice big stars into joining long-running shows. But Tony officials struggled to come up with a mechanism for awarding the prize, finally deciding to leave it up to the 24-member administration committee.

Pryce was furious to learn that only 16 of the 24 administrators bothered to see his performance.

A person on the committee said: "Jonathan's unhappiness certainly had something to do with our decision. His performance was highly valued, and the award should have been presented to him. It was our mistake that it was not."

DULY noted:

* Songs from the musicals produced and directed by the legendary Hal Prince will be featured in "Broadway Under the Stars," the free concert being performed Monday at 8 p.m. on the Great Lawn in Central Park.

Jane Krakowski, Sutton Foster, Michael Cerveris, Bebe Neuwirth and the stars of "Jersey Boys" will sing songs from "Evita," "The Phantom of the Opera," "The Pajama Game" and "Fiddler on the Roof."

* "Altar Boyz" is hitting the road.

The popular off-Broadway musical about a Christian boy band kicks off a national tour in Chicago in October.

Meanwhile, teenage girls and middle-age gay men continue to flock to the show in New York.

* Sales are brisk for the upcoming Broadway revival of "A Chorus Line." The advance is up to $5 million, buoyed by a commercial on the Tony Awards telecast. The show opens in San Francisco in July before hitting New York in September.

michael.riedel@nypost.com

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