(The one concession to television is the color of the G-man himself. In the book he is - horror of horrors - merely a black-and-white line drawing. No child today would ever accept such a heresy. So, the stage Grinch is the precise hue of the TV Grinch - the pea shade associated with jealousy - and money.)
Shortly after O'Brien's production made it to Broadway in 2006, the creative team began planning how to reconfigure the show for a tour. Some effects that work just fine when a show hunkers down and remains in the same building for months on end are impossible to duplicate on the road, when the show visits halls ranging from 2,000 to 3,000 seats with vastly different backstage configurations.
"For instance, there is a Christmas tree that appears several times in the story," O'Brien says.
"On Broadway, we had a mechanized deck, and the tree could appear as if by magic. But the deck was much too expensive and complicated to lug around. So what did we do? On the tour, we put the Christmas tree in a red Dr. Seuss wagon, and the characters pull it on stage. It's the cutest thing you've ever seen."
Boris Karloff provided the memorable voice of television's Grinch, and Patrick Page played the role on Broadway. On the tour, Stefan Karl, star of the Nickelodeon TV series, LazyTown, snagged the part. Karl has been referred to as "the Icelandic Jim Carrey," because of his extraordinarily elastic features and vast appetite for clowning; indeed, the actor seemingly can't even drink a glass of water without squinching his mouth up nearly into his eyebrows for comic effect.
The role of the Grinch requires so much gymnastics, and the costume (a padded foam pod covered by thick fur) is so hot, that Karl loses weight each time he performs. It's enough of a problem - and heat stroke is enough of a possibility - that the costume designers added several hidden pockets to the get-up, alongside Karl's waist and neck.
"There are like 400 lights in my face," Karl says. "I really sweat. Every time I go offstage, my dresser pulls open my costume and puts bags of ice in my pockets to cool me off. I probably go through six bags during each performance."
Karl and his wife have three little girl Whos and one little boy Who - ages 13, 7, 18 months and 6 months - and he admits that his performance honors a request made by his two eldest daughters.
"I can do an especially loud belch," he says. "Briet and Elin asked me to do it in the show. Every time I make that noise, I think of them."
