Whether singing "Try to Remember" as the dashing narrator of "The Fantasticks" in 1960 or trading barbs with fellow detectives and reluctant witnesses on television in recent years, Mr. Orbach exuded a wry, ragged masculinity that was all his own. As a star of musicals, he created a new kind of hero who was leagues away from suave, swaggering Adonises like John Raitt, Howard Keel, and Alfred Drake... And he flourished at a time when the Broadway musical hero was fast becoming an endangered species... His rough-edged individuality may account for his endurance on the Broadway stage in an era when other promising musical actors - including Larry Kert, Robert Goulet, and Robert Morse - proved unable to follow through on their breakthrough successes. Mr. Orbach may have been the last of a breed: no male star since has matched the breadth and continuity of his career in musicals... It wasn't until the 1990s, when he started appearing as Lennie Briscoe in "Law & Order," that Mr. Orbach became a familiar name throughout the country. The rough edge that distinguished him on Broadway eased his transition to character roles like Briscoe, the recovered alcoholic who seemed to greet the discovery of each episode's crime with a world-weary shrug.