George Wendt: Away from the bar, into the girdle

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George Wendt is still best known for his constant presence at the end of a certain Boston bar where everybody knows your name - but these days, you're more likely to see his name up in lights on a Broadway marquee.

Critic J. Kelly Nestruck keeps an eye on what's going on in theatre. Follow his blog here.

Wendt - who played big-boned Boston barfly Norm Peterson on Cheers from 1982 to 1993 - has had a somewhat surprising late-career reinvention as a star of musical theatre.

This month, the Chicago-born actor, 61, is at Prince Edward Island's Charlottetown Festival reprising the role of hefty housewife Edna Turnblad in Hairspray, a part he previously played on Broadway.

Immediately after that production ends in October, Wendt heads back to New York to rehearse the role of Santa Claus in Elf, a new musical co-created by The Drowsy Chaperone's Bob Martin and based on the 2003 Will Ferrell movie comedy.

Wendt, who's been humming Broadway tunes since his dad took him to shows as a child, has sung them onstage here and there during his career - doing the occasional number during his years at Second City in Chicago in the 1970s; playing slave Pseudolus in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum at the Williamstown Theatre Festival in 1990; playing overprotective dad Harry MacAfee in an ABC movie of Bye Bye Birdie.

But performing musical theatre was always going to be an infrequent activity, he thought. "The roles are few and far between for an obese, post-middle-age man who doesn't sing or dance in the musical theatre," says Wendt, over the phone from Charlottetown.

"And then along came Edna."

Edna is the mother of Tracy Turnblad, the plucky plus-sized heroine of Hairspray (played by Stephanie Pitsiladis at the Charlottetown Festival) who sets out to integrate a TV teen dance show in 1962 Baltimore.

For reasons that aren't entirely clear but with results that are almost always entertaining, Edna has always been played by a man in Hairspray's various incarnations. Divine - the iconic, full-figured female impersonator - originated the role in John Waters's 1988 film, while Torch Song Trilogy's Harvey Fierstein played her when the musical adaptation debuted on Broadway in 2002. Since then, men with less obvious credits in cross-dressing have played Edna, including John Travolta when the musical was adapted back into a movie in 2007.

While Wendt was giving his well-received rendition of Edna in New York, he got a chance to immerse himself in the city's musical theatre scene for a year. He took part in readings and workshops - and was particularly glad to be involved a couple of new shows being developed with Martin in the wake of his The Drowsy Chaperone going from a Toronto Fringe hit to Broadway acclaim.

"I'm a big fan of Bob from his work at Second City and through Slings and Arrows, which is my second-favourite TV show ever," says Wendt, referring to the Canadian series about life behind the scenes at a fictional Stratford-esque theatre festival that Martin co-wrote with Mark McKinney and Susan Coyne. "I have two copies of the complete series - I lay them on anybody and everybody and demand that they watch it."

(For the record, Wendt's favourite television show is The Sopranos; Cheers comes in third.)

The first Martin musical Wendt worked on was Minsky's, a loose adaptation of the 1968 movie The Night They Raided Minsky's with music by Annie's Charles Strouse. (The show debuted in Los Angeles in 2009 with an eye on Broadway, but has yet to make it there.)

This second is Elf, which Martin is writing with Hairspray's Tom Meehan, and songwriters Matthew Sklar and Chad Beguelin, who previous adapted Adam Sandler's The Wedding Singer into a musical. Elf begins previews at the Al Hirschfeld Theater on Nov. 2 with the aim of become a seasonal presence on Broadway.

Wendt was a shoo-in for the role of Santa Claus: He's played jolly old Saint Nick four times in the past four years, on Christmas specials by Stephen Colbert and Larry the Cable Guy, in the TV movie Santa Baby starring Jenny McCarthy and in a direct-to-DVD kids movie called Santa Buddies: The Legend of Santa Paws.

"It just goes to show: You stay fat enough and get old enough and the offers roll in for Santa," Wendt jokes. "With any luck, if Elf works, I'll be back in the sled for a few Christmases."

Currently, he's enjoying wearing Edna's housedress once again at the Charlottetown Festival. "I've always wanted to be up here in Atlantic Canada - I'm a fan of the seafood," he says. "I've been putting a severe dent in the oyster population - and, not coincidentally, my wallet."

He's also been enjoying the handcrafted ales at the Gahan House Pub & Brewery near where he's staying - he's even become a bit of a regular there - shades of the character for which he was nominated six times for an Emmy.

Is he greeted by a collective cry of "Norm!" when he saunters in? "The odd patron who's had a few will say it," Wendt says, "but not the staff."

Hairspray opens Wednesday Sept. 8 and runs until Oct. 9 at Charlottetown's Confederation Centre of the Arts ( www.confederationcentre.com).