Linda Lavin, who tickled our funny bones and broke our hearts, is mourned by Broadway

Linda Lavin, who died Sunday at age 87, was a captivating Broadway star beloved by audiences for her electrifying contradictions.A celebrated fixture of the New York stage for six decades, the Tony Award-winning actress was just 5-foot-3-inches tall yet towering; maternal and volcanic; glitteringly musical and groundedly real; hilarious and heartbreaking.Her sardonic punchline could be followed by a shattering gut-punch a second later.“She was several women in one fragile body,” playwright Charles Busch, whose Broadway play “The Tale of the Allergist’s Wife” starred Lavin in 2000, told The Post.“To be able to conjure forth such sharp wit, comic invention and intense emotion, she had to be a woman of great complexity.”She was.And one of staggering range.Dramas, comedies, plays, musicals — Lavin ably did it all with an artistry and assuredness few can match.Yes, Lavin played many mothers.

But from fame-hungry Mama Rose in the 1989 revival of “Gypsy,” in which she replaced Tyne Daly, to the secretive lead of her final Broadway show, 2016’s “Our Mother’s Brief Affair” by Richard Greenberg, the roles couldn’t have been more different.Lavin won the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play in 1987 for playing another mom, Kate Jerome, in “Broadway Bound,” the final chapter of Neil Simon’s Eugene Trilogy.Kate’s life is a hard one.Her sons, portrayed by Jonathan Silverman and Jason Alexander, are about to leave her, her husband is cheating and her father is growing old.Kate’s speech to her wandering spouse overflows with pain.“I am so angry,” she tells him.

“I am so hurt by your selfishness.”However, Lavin never settled for just one adjective.In critic Clive Barnes’ review in The Post, he called her “a delight.”And The Times’ Frank Rich well understood the Olympic balancing act the star had triumphantly mastered — and would for her entire career.“One only wishes that Ms.

Lavin, whose touching performance is of t...