Way down from Walton’s mountain

NEW YORK —  Fans of “The Waltons” and Richard Thomas, a star of the popular ‘70s television series, will be jarred to hear the former squeaky-clean John Boy described as looking like “the manager of a pornographic bookshop” or “a meatball cooked in fat.”

But here it is, 2004, and Thomas, 53, who played a self-described “sexual omnivore” when last seen on the New York stage, has been cast as a spy in “Democracy,” Michael Frayn’s latest history-based drama to come to Broadway. Even that image doesn’t ring quite true to type, for this spy is further depicted as “obsequious ... boring,” with a hero worship of the man he is busily betraying.

This time Thomas is Gunter Guillaume, the East German mole who brought about the political downfall of West German Chancellor Willy Brandt in 1974. The play is as much about the complexity of the two men’s not-so-odd-fellows relationship as it is about skulduggery and espionage. James Naughton plays the charismatic but flawed Brandt.

The still-blond and youthful-looking Thomas keeps a picture of Guillaume in his dressing room backstage at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre, along with photographs of his seven children. The nerdy glasses the actor dons for the part resemble those worn by Guillaume in the photograph and, he said, “that’s my character right there, as soon as I put them on my face.”

Director Michael Blakemore appears unconcerned that audiences might come expecting to see John Boy. “He’s been doing this since the age of 7,” he said of an actor who made his Broadway debut in “Sunrise at Campobello” in 1958. Any lingering shadows “are forgotten 10 minutes into the play.”

Thomas’ own feelings about a character he last played in the early ‘80s in a Walton family reunion special are somewhat conflicted. Long ago, he became convinced the headline on his obituary would read “ ‘John Boy dead at 94.’ Or 102,” he said.

“But, what can you do? That’s just the way it is. Nothing comes without a price, but how many actors have had such an opportunity? It always amazes me how present he is in people’s minds,” Thomas said.

Last September, “I found myself, 30 years later, addressing a group of 3,000 avid, devoted fans. People approach me like cousins.”

Since moving to New York earlier this year, Thomas has been busy in the theater, including a role in Terrence McNally’s “The Stendhal Syndrome,” as a flamboyant bisexual conductor, and a one-man show about Tennessee Williams.