01:00 AM EDT on Sunday, May 28, 2006

BY ANDY SMITH
Journal Television Writer

Actor Conrad John Schuck estimates he's closing in on his 3,000th performance as Daddy Warbucks, the benevolent, bald tycoon of the musical Annie.

The veteran character actor, perhaps best known as Sergeant Enright on the TV series McMillan and Wife, will play Warbucks when Annie comes to the Providence Performing Arts Center, starting Tuesday and running though next Sunday.

In a phone interview from Nashville, where Annie was playing, Schuck said he first played the part of Warbucks on Broadway in 1979, with Sarah Jessica Parker as Annie.

"I was 39 when I started playing Warbucks, so I tried to play him older," Schuck said. "Now I'm 66, and I try to play him younger."

Well, just how old is Daddy Warbucks supposed to be?

No one knows, Schuck said. In the original Little Orphan Annie comic strip, Warbucks' lack of hair (and pupils) made it difficult to figure his age. Schuck figures he's in his late 40s or early 50s.

"The challenge is to turn a cartoon character into someone you care about," Schuck said. "Warbucks is wealthy, but he's a failure in human terms.

"When we first meet him, he needs something more in his life than money, and he's smart enough to realize it. Then Annie comes along, and she's looking for a parent, so they each fill a need for the other."

In the comic strip, Schuck said, Warbucks' company made munitions, which makes sense considering his name.

In the Depression-era musical, the precise nature of Daddy W's enterprise is left vague, although there is a scene in which he asks President Franklin D. Roosevelt for help in keeping the factories open. (Even though Warbucks is a Republican.)

Schuck said he shaves his head every day when playing Warbucks, although lately he's become "hair-impaired," and requires less shaving than when he was younger.

Schuck was born in Boston -- his father was an English professor -- then moved with his family to Princeton, N.J., and Buffalo, N.Y. The key moment of his childhood, he said, was when his parents took him to see Oklahoma on Broadway.

"That changed my life," Schuck said. "From that time on, I wanted to be an actor."

Schuck graduated from Denison University in Granville, Ohio, then appeared in regional theaters in Cleveland, Baltimore and San Francisco. While playing the lead in Little Murders at the American Conservatory Theatre in San Francisco, he was spotted by film director Robert Altman, who cast him as the dentist Walter "Painless" Waldowski in M*A*S*H.

Schuck appeared in three other Altman movies -- Brewster McCloud, McCabe and Mrs. Miller and Thieves Like Us -- and said he would love to work with Altman again.

In 1972, Schuck began the six-season run of McMillan and Wife, and he's been getting TV work ever since: guest parts on Matlock, Murder She Wrote, L.A. Law, Sisters, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, NYPD Blue and lots more.

At the moment, he has an occasional role on Law & Order: SVU as a cantankerous precinct commander.

But he's never gotten over his love of the theater.

"I do the TV stuff to help me get theater work," said Schuck, who divides his time between Venice Beach, Calif., and New York City when he's not on the road with Annie.

(Speaking of Annie, Schuck played Buffalo Bill in the Broadway revival of Annie Get Your Gun, with Reba McEntire in the title role.)

"I love the fluidity [of the theater]. There are no two nights that are the same," Schuck said. "I don't look at it as work, although it is. I see it as a calling . . .

"The biggest part of my talent is to communicate the fun and joyful aspect of what I do. Perhaps that's naive, but it works for me."

Schuck said the current tour of Annie runs until July 2, and there's the possibility of another tour next year.

"I call Annie my working annuity," Schuck said.

Schuck said he saw the 2003 Trinity Repertory Company version of Annie, which originally came with a radically new ending that had Annie waking up from her dream of a new life to find herself back in the shabby orphanage. Annie's writers didn't approve of the change, and Trinity restored the show's original happy ending.

"I saw the first version. It was very dark," Schuck said. "I liked it, up until the very end.

"It was an intriguing take on the story. The fact is, these kids are in an orphanage. It's a terrible life they're leading, at a terrible time for the world, which is such a contrast to the life Warbucks leads."

Annie will be at the Providence Performing Arts Center from Tuesday through next Sunday. Performance times are 7 p.m. Tuesday, 7:30 p.m. Wednesday and Thursday, 8 p.m. Friday, 2 and 8 p.m. Saturday, and 1 and 6:30 p.m. next Sunday. Tickets range from $38 to $65. Call (401) 421-2787 or go to www.ppacri.org.

asmith@projo.com / (401) 277-7262