Michael C. Hall rises from ‘Six Feet Under’

Michael C. Hall is back at the Roundabout Theatre Company, which is where he made the jump from replacement in the long-running revival of “Cabaret” to star in TV’s “Six Feet Under.”

And his new Roundabout role as “Mr. Marmalade,” the title character in Noah Haidle’s disturbing play about a lonely young girl who creates an imaginary friend, is about as far away as possible from the fearful and reactive funeral director he portrayed on the acclaimed HBO series.

“I have never read anything quite like it,” Hall says, sipping a cup of Starbucks one morning before rehearsals begin at the company’s Laura Pels Theatre, its smaller space on West 46th Street, east of Times Square.

“The play follows its own rules. It focuses on a 4-year-old girl named Lucy who has a complicated relationship with an imaginary friend called Mr. Marmalade,” Hall says.

“We join them at sort of a crossroads in their relationship, and I think Lucy is working a lot out through this, perhaps something involving her absent father. This is all open to interpretation, of course. But I think a lot of those things are clearly alluded to over the course of the play.”

Hall, wearing a casual gray sweater, looks younger than his 34 years. For one thing, his brown hair is tousled, unlike the clenched, rigidly combed “do” he wore as David Fisher, the gay second son on “Six Feet Under.” And he smiles, something the uptight David would almost never consider.

The actor came to the series in 2000 while he was still playing the master of ceremonies in “Cabaret.” He left the Kander and Ebb musical for a month to fly to Los Angeles to audition — and then get — the TV job.

As “Six Feet Under” was winding down earlier this year after a five-year run, “I felt like I needed an exorcism,” Hall says. “I had been playing the character so long.”

And the demise of “Six Feet Under” has allowed him to do “Mr. Marmalade” and work for director Michael Greif, who once auditioned Hall for “Rent.” Hall didn’t get a part in the musical, but he did meet his future wife, actress Amy Spanger, at the audition.

Greif has long admired Hall’s work, having been a fan of “Six Feet Under,” and seeing him on stage, most memorably in a Los Angeles production of David Hare’s “Skylight.”

“Although on some level, the little girl is completely creating Mr. Marmalade, Michael brings incredible skills — both verbally and physically — to the role and a willingness to go to some very deep and dark places of psychological complexity,” Greif says. “That combination serves the play beautifully.

“Each of Noah’s plays has its own theatrical frame, and I was very excited by the challenges of the frame for ‘Mr. Marmalade’ — which has adults playing kids — but also how to unfold and reveal a darker subtext to what initially feels like a romp.”

It’s Hall’s character who provides that darker subtext, an unsympathetic fellow created, according to Greif, by this lonely girl to cope with her troubling reality.

Hall grew up in Raleigh, N.C. He sang in the church choir and because his high school was small, was able to do everything, from star in musicals to play sports. He ended up at Earlham College, a Quaker school in Richmond, Ind., not certain what he wanted to do with his life.

At Earlham, he was encouraged to pursue acting and to audition for New York University’s respected graduate program. “I was terrified. It was the first time in my life that I wanted something specific,” he says. But he got in.

NYU provided a door to the Public Theater and roles in the nonprofit theater’s Shakespeare productions in Central Park, including understudying Andre Braugher in “Henry V.”

“It allowed me to go right to work as an actor,” he says.

Hall went into “Cabaret” in 1999 and was encouraged by director Sam Mendes to make the role, originated in the revival by Alan Cumming, his own. And then it was on to “Six Feet Under.”

The almost-cult status of the TV show made him realize that the role of David Fisher will always be there for some people, no matter what new parts he plays. “It’s out there. There’s no reining it back in.

“I managed to be lucky enough to get a job that, while commercially successful, was also among the most artistically viable things I’ve ever done. The cast was — across the board — the most talented group of actors I’ve ever worked with. And David Fisher is one of the greatest characters I’ve played or will ever play.”

Not that “Six Feet Under” will ever come back for a revival — since all the leading characters died in the final episode.

“Unless it’s in some other dimension, I don’t see a reunion movie,” Hall says.