NEW YORK (AP) - Christopher Plummer's timing has been pretty much impeccable these days. No sooner was he looking for a return to Broadway than a juicy part materialized in ''Inherit the Wind.'' And just when he was beginning to worry it was a tad dated, presidential politics showed him otherwise.

''We thought for a while, 'Uh oh, this is going to be a bit of an old warhorse,''' Plummer says during an interview in his Lyceum Theatre dressing room. ''Not at all. The audience that comes every night are absolutely in it.''

That's partly due to the sheer strength of the performance of Plummer, who, with Brian Dennehy, offers a fresh take on the courtroom drama based on the 1925 Scopes ''Monkey Trial.'' It also might have something to do with three Republican presidential hopefuls raising their hands during a recent debate when asked who didn't believe in evolution.

Politics helped infuse the old warhorse - originally intended to be less about evolution than a critique of McCarthyism - with new energy.

''Strangely enough, it is stronger as a take on the present situation - this sort of fervent evangelism that seems to haunt the nation,'' says Plummer. ''People just don't learn.''

He says this with a twinkle, stretched out on a sofa wearing a tracksuit bottom, a sweat shirt, penny loafers and a neon blue scarf tied nattily around his neck. Plummer, with his silver hair and ever-so-slight English accent, makes the ensemble look downright elegant.

At 77, his career is not slowing down. In fact, the Canadian-born star of ''The Sound of Music'' has enjoyed something of a renaissance lately in his film and theater work.

''He has incomparable gifts and yet he works as though he needs to make up for his deficiencies, of which he has none,'' says Doug Hughes, who is directing Plummer's latest play. ''We have the personal pleasure of watching someone at the top of their game.''

In ''Inherit the Wind,'' Plummer plays canny lawyer Henry Drummond - a character based on famed trial lawyer Clarence Darrow - opposite Dennehy's Matthew Harrison Brady - a fictional William Jennings Bryan, the perennial presidential candidate.

It's a testament to Plummer's longevity that he remembers seeing the play's original Broadway run in 1955 with Paul Muni, who played his part and won a Tony Award.

''I was 25 - that was quite a long time ago,'' he says, laughing. By then, Plummer was already on Broadway himself starring opposite Julie Harris in ''The Lark.''

He does remember attending the Tony Awards dinner that season, a private affair long before the TV coverage and hype. Plummer liked the earlier event more.

''It was an intimate, rather sophisticated night. Good dinner, good food,'' he recalls. ''Everybody just stood up and got their prize and then sat down again. Fine.''

Predictably, Plummer is following in Muni's footsteps by earning a Tony nomination for the role, his seventh. After winning two - for ''Cyrano'' in 1974 and ''Barrymore'' in 1997 - he could win his third award June 10.

''I don't really like talking about that. That's not what the theater's about, prizes,'' he says. ''If something happens along the way, then great, that's fine. But the problem is that it dominates the economics of the theater, which is a shame.

''Suddenly, some play wins the prize, and because it's won it's allowed to run, whereas some very worthy piece that maybe needed help along the way financially, takes a nosedive. That's sad. It's a little overpowerful.''

That word that could easily describe Plummer, whose Hamlet, Cyrano, Iago, Othello and Henry V, to name just a few, have been hailed as stage masterpieces.

''I was very lucky. I grew up in front of an audience. My debut professionally was when I was 18 years old. And when I look back, I was never really out of a job,'' he says.

Plummer has decorated his dressing room - so small he jokingly calls it ''Dickensian'' - with posters of his Shakespearean triumphs. There are no references to his role as Capt. Georg von Trapp or the musical he derisively calls ''The Sound of Mucus.''

Unlike his stellar theater career, Plummer's film roles have often dipped into the frothy: A ''Pink Panther'' movie here, a ''Dracula 2000'' there and even a ''Star Trek'' - as a Klingon, no less. There even was a film called ''Lock Up Your Daughters.''

''For a long time, I accepted parts that took me to attractive places in the world. Rather than shooting in the Bronx, I would rather go to the south of France, crazed creature than I am,'' he says, laughing. ''And so I sacrificed a lot of my career for nicer hotels and more attractive beaches.

''And then I suddenly realized, 'Wait a minute. This is awful!' At least I went back to the theater every now and then and did things perhaps that people might take me more seriously.''

Things changed when Michael Mann asked him to play Mike Wallace in his 1999 film ''The Insider.'' That led to roles in ''A Beautiful Mind,'' ''Alexander,'' ''Syriana'' and ''Inside Man.''

''Suddenly, everything changed. I got A-scripts instead of B-scripts. Suddenly, movies started to get fascinating again,'' says Plummer. ''I don't play the lead, but I certainly play interesting roles.''

Last year, he was casting about for a theater role he could sink his teeth into following the successful Broadway run of ''King Lear'' in 2004.

''You know, you arrive at a certain age as an actor and you spend time thinking, 'What parts can I play now that are sort of credibly within my age range?'

''We like to say, 'Well, let's go back 30 years - I can still get away with it.' But literally you have to be a little bit more sensible than that. And, of course, Henry Drummond, is one of them. Particularly after playing the Lears and the Prosperos and all the older men's parts - he's in there.''

It was Plummer who persuaded producers to hire his old friend Dennehy. They wanted a film star on the marquee, but Plummer insisted on a ''theater animal.''

''You always worry about the screen actors,'' he says, tongue firmly in cheek. ''No matter how good they are, I often wonder if they're going to fall off the stage.''

It wasn't hard for Plummer to grasp his role. He'd already seen a number of Darrows - Spencer Tracy's 1960 movie version of the play, Orson Welles in ''Compulsion'' and Henry Fonda's one-man Broadway show. He even listened to a rare recording of Darrow, which turned out to be a bad idea.

''He was reading something and it was rather monotonous,'' he says. ''If I emulated that, it would drive everybody out of the theater. So I just used the rest of my own imagination.''

Imagination is an important part of Plummer's repertoire. He doesn't subscribe to the common perception of the Method school, which encourages actors to find personal pain to propel them forward in their roles.

''If you discourage imagination - that's almost a crime. Everybody has tons of personalities within one's frame to untap, to use - so use them. Don't always think, 'There's only one me.' Because how boring that is.

''I love people in this business who know their craft and have a sense of humor who don't take themselves so seriously. That's why I say I don't suffer for my art. I have a ball doing it.''

By MARK KENNEDY Associated Press Writer

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