| |
|
|
Bruce Vilanch is dame Edna
|
|
|
|
|
Bruce Vilanch slowly became famous for doing anonymous work. As a joke writer for everything from Bette Midler’s one-woman shows to the Academy Awards to the infamous 1978 Star Wars Holiday Special (which featured lots of Wookies, not to mention Bea Arthur belting out a number in the cantina), Vilanch has, to quote Nathan Lane, "given more lines to celebrities than a Hollywood coke dealer." Now he’s saying and singing other writers’ lines in the national-touring company of the Tony-winning Broadway musical Hairspray, which settles into Boston’s Colonial Theatre next week. Vilanch plays Edna Turnblad, the "big, blond, and beautiful" Baltimore working-class mom who’s ushered into the ’60s as her plump teenybopper daughter, Tracy (Carly Jibson), becomes the hit of — and helps racially integrate — a local afternoon TV dance show. "Hairspray is about the fat kid winning. How often does that happen?" says Vilanch, on the phone from his hotel room in Baltimore, where the tour appropriately began. "I wound up being popular in high school because of what I did. But I was never romantically successful, which [Tracy] certainly is. I mean, she gets the hottest guy on the TV show. I didn’t. It took me years to get the hottest guy on the TV show." Edna is a role that calls on Vilanch to fill some mighty big pumps. Harvey Fierstein won a Tony for playing Edna, in whose guise he’s still rasping away on Broadway. And John Waters’s go-to-guy-in-gal’s clothing, Divine, created the character in the 1988 cult film on which the musical’s based. "When I auditioned for the show, I came in saying, ‘Am I supposed to do [an impression of Fierstein]?’" recalls Vilanch. "And then I saw the movie again and realized that everybody’s entitled to have a different take on how Edna’s played. I enjoy doing it for audiences who haven’t seen Harvey because ones who have, of course, are comparing, and you can’t really compare. Because he’s a whole different animal, he’s brilliant." Acknowledging that "what’s so anxiety-producing [about being in Hairspray] is the fact that it’s all so big-time," the 54-year-old Vilanch is quick to note that he’s "been on stage all my life. It just hasn’t been the primary focus because I started doing well as a writer." Indeed, it wasn’t until the late ’90s that people outside of Hollywood began to recognize Vilanch. And with a shaggy head of sandy hair, an equally shaggy beard (though he’s had to shave it off for the show), and bright red glasses, he is instantly recognizable. (It’s a federal law that you can’t write an article about Vilanch without comparing his appearance to that of a Muppet.) Vilanch — and the award-show writing process — was the subject of the 1999 Miramax documentary Get Bruce — though, as anyone who’s seen the movie can attest, Vilanch’s quintessential Jewish mother, who had a past in theater, stole the show in her few minutes onscreen. ("She’s seen Hairspray three times already," says Vilanch. "She’s trying not to be Mama Rose. She’s going to [follow the show] through the Northeast until the card game moves to Florida.") Vilanch has also written a column for the Advocate (many of the pieces appear in his 2000 book Bruce! My Adventures in the Skin Trade and Other Essays), and from 1998 until last year he was positioned a square away from pal Whoopi Goldberg on Hollywood Squares. Before Hairspray came along, he’d been getting his on-stage fix by touring the country with a one-man show about his experiences in showbiz. That show opened with the song "We’re the Queens Behind the Scenes." It’s a club in which Vilanch is having a harder and harder time claiming membership. Hairspray is at the Colonial Theatre, 106 Boylston Street, Boston, October 7 through November 1. Tickets are $30 to $97, available at the Colonial box office or through Ticketmaster at (617) 931-2787.
|
