Educating Edna Vilanch’s ‘smart with heart’ Hairspray BY BILL RODRIGUEZ

No way, no how — Hairspray: The Musical can’t be better than the movie. That 1988 cult fave was a charmer, but director John Waters seemed to have instructed the cast to impersonate bad actors as well as play their characters in his breakout hit. He was goofing on tacky American culture as well as celebrating the spunk it takes to rise above it.

The touring musical settles into the Providence Performing Arts Center November 4 through 16, with glitz and Broadway production values coming to the support of its campy spirit. Baltimore high hair of the early ’60s will compete with the Cranston competition of 2003. Chunky 16-year-old Tracy Turnblad will become a regular on The Corny Collins Show (read: American Bandstand), will win the heart of the coolest looking boy, and fight to integrate the TV dance show.

All with the support of her fab mom, Edna Turnblad, which was played by none other than Divine in the movie and Harvey Fierstein in the Broadway show that grabbed eight Tonys.

Playing Edna on the road is Bruce Vilanch, and he brings his own glitzy charm, as larger-than-wife personality and a comedy writer. He has written the master of ceremonies lines for 15 Academy Awards, from Billy Crystal to Whoopi Goldberg. For years he was head writer on The Hollywood Squares, where he was stationed in the square next to Whoopi. He was the subject of Get Bruce, the 1999 documentary about writing the Oscars show. He has written a column for the Advocate, the gay weekly. And so on.

He spoke about the production by phone from his hotel room in Boston.

Q: You’ve been playing Edna only since Labor Day, in Baltimore, John Waters’s hometown. Is she a comfortable fit yet?

A: Well, I don’t think anybody’s ever comfortable in pantyhose. They didn’t warn me about that. It’s like sitting on the wrong bicycle seat every day.

Q: Did understanding Edna come easy to you?

A: I was around when all this happened in 1962. I was kind of paying attention then. I knew a lot of people who were like Edna in Paterson, New Jersey, where I grew up. We were replete with Ednas. She’s very much a product of her age. I mean, she’s kind of puritanical but bawdy at the same time. She has many compartments. While she’s very funny, there’s also something deeply human about her. She just wants what’s good for her daughter, and she has a really amazing, loving relationship with her husband. Part of the message of the show is to accept who you are. She grows as the show goes on. At the beginning of the show she doesn’t really accept who she is, but by the end she realizes that who she is is pretty fabulous.

Q: When you discuss the difference between the movie and the musical, what do you talk about?

A: The movie is a John Waters picture through and through. It’s one of the first ones where he reached a major public. It’s got a lot rougher edges — the musical, after all, is a big Broadway show. And in a John Waters movie, the worse things are, the better it is for the movie. And that doesn’t really work in a Broadway musical. We have to convey that feeling while still bringing down the house. So it’s an interesting combination. I call it "smart with heart."

Q: Is this your first cross-dressed role? You mentioned the hard time with pantyhose.

A: Yeah, there wasn’t a lot of call for a bearded lady, and I had a beard for 32 years. Before I grew a beard I did a couple of things, but I didn’t have a real life in drag. And Harvey and Divine both did, actually.

Q: So you shaved off your beard for the role. Was that a difficult decision?

A: Nah, because I really wanted to play the part. But it was traumatic, so I decided that rather than do it privately where I might kill myself, I did it on Regis and Kelly. I figured I really couldn’t kill myself, because I didn’t want to get their ratings that high.

Q: Joke writers usually grew up making wisecracks out of self-protection in schoolyards. Was that so in your case — or were you the bully?

A: No, I was absolutely the victim. Almost classic, textbook. It was a mechanism to disarm them. Although I was also doing it for my own benefit, joking to make myself laugh. But, yes, it came in very handy, because I wasn’t like any of them.

Q: Does a particular show you wrote for stand out as the most fun to do?

A: Well, the Oscars. I’ve done them 15 times, and it’s the greatest show on earth. People who don’t go to the movies watch it, people who don’t watch TV watch it. I mean, it’s like a gigantic human spectacle. So, knowing that it’s the Super Bowl of entertainment, that millions and millions of people are tuned in, and it’s all live, makes it a tremendous amount of fun.

Q: Is your forte coming up with quips rather than longer comedy writing, or are we just talking short attention span, Bruce?

A: Heh-heh. Yeah, that’s my problem. No, I kind of carved out a niche for myself in listening to what people say and writing to that. Giving them things to say that makes sense in their voices. I had more success with that than with movie scripts or television pilots that get made and don’t get picked up, or fall into turnaround or one of those hells.

Q: You have to attune yourself, your little quivering antennas, to particular voices. You really have to know the voices of Whoopi, Billy — Hermione Gingold, if she came up. Is there a voice that you especially identify with?

A: Oh, it’s Bette Midler, who I’ve been working with for 32 years — which is difficult, because she’s only 35. She starts her tour December 10, and we’ve been working on it for the last year. So I will be doing it from a distance. I will be cybering and downloading furiously.

Playwrights actually have to come up with all these voices themselves, and I’m given a voice by the person who has it. Although a lot of times you have to start by coming up with one for somebody because they don’t have a voice. Some actors really don’t have a stage persona that you can write to, so you kind of have to help them come up with one and then write to it. It has its own little delicacy.