GYPSY OF THE MONTH: Kirsten Wyatt of 'A Christmas Story'

"I've carved my niche," says Kirsten Wyatt. Lots of actors can say that. But none has carved a niche quite like Wyatt's. She is (presumably) the only person ever to play an elf in three different Broadway shows.

This year she's the surly head elf in Higbee's department store during Ralphie's nightmarish trip to see Santa in A Christmas Story: The Musical. Wyatt was also an elf-but for the real Santa-in Broadway's last new Yule-musical before A Christmas Story, 2010's Elf. And she played a fairy-tale elf in Shrek.

Don't think for a minute she approached all these roles the same. The almost-5-foot-1 Wyatt explains her Method: "In Shrek I was the Shoemaker's Elf. I was displaced, I was a little lost, perhaps a little ditzy, and slightly disgruntled. My elf in Elf was very happy to be an elf. You're Santa's elf-that's like the top of elfdom! This one, she's not happy to be an elf at all. She prefers to drink rather than be an elf and push children upstairs."

Ralphie's encounter with Santa is one of the many classic setpieces from the 1983 movie that have been reproduced in the stage musical, which opens tonight at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre. A Christmas Story's leg lamp, pink bunny suit, Christmas dinner in a Chinese restaurant, and the triple dog dare that results in a tongue frozen to a pole are there too. Wyatt was familiar with them all before she got cast in the show. "I have been a giant fan of A Christmas Story ever since I saw it as a little girl. I've seen the movie so many times that I can pretty much quote it word for word," says Wyatt, who first did A Christmas Story on stage last year when it toured (it had been produced in previous years at Kansas City Rep and Seattle's 5th Avenue Theatre). "As an unofficial expert on the movie, I think we do justice to every single one of these iconic moments."

Wyatt even thinks the stage production improves on one scene: when Ralphie gets a C+ on his 'What I want for Christmas' essay. In the movie, Ralphie envisions his mother and teacher as a jester and witch, respectively, mocking him ("Honestly, that part always struck me as kind of weird," Wyatt says). In the play, the fantasy sequence becomes a huge nightclub-set dance number called-what else?-"You'll Shoot Your Eye Out."

Those big production numbers in A Christmas Story-there's one involving leg lamps, too, as well as a Wild West fantasy where Ralphie puts his coveted Red Ryder rifle to use-give Wyatt additional parts to play besides elf. She even has a speaking part as neighbor Mrs. Schwartz. Oh, yes, Wyatt can play someone other than an elf...though she's also played kids repeatedly as an adult. Her characters were children in her first two Broadway shows, Urinetown and You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown, and she played a teenager in Grease (a decade after college).

All told Wyatt's been in eight Broadway shows. Originally a vacation swing in Urinetown, she eventually had a regular track in the ensemble that included the role of Little Becky Two Shoes, which she also played on the Urinetown tour for a few months after the show closed in New York in 2004. She returned to Broadway in 2006's The Pajama Game revival, filling in for various cast members on leave. Later that year she was part of the original company of High Fidelity.

She's also done innumerable regional productions, and had principal roles both in New York and regionally. She was Frenchy in the 2007 Broadway revival of Grease, and earlier this year portrayed Agnes Gooch in Goodspeed's Mame as well as Paulette in Legally Blonde at the Cape Playhouse. Her Gooch was honored with an Outstanding Performance award from the Connecticut Critics Circle. Other regional credits include My One and Only, both at Goodspeed in 2011 and years earlier at Rhode Island's Theatre by the Sea; The Boyfriend, directed by Julie Andrews, also at Goodspeed; Godspell and A Christmas Carol at the Alabama Shakespeare Festival; and High Society at the American Conservatory Theater (ACT) in San Francisco.

Clearly, comedy is Wyatt's forte-and she names such legendary TV comediennes as Lucille Ball, Carol Burnett and Megan Mullally as idols. But even more: Gracie Allen. Wyatt knew almost nothing about Allen other than she was the partner of George Burns when she caught a clip of them at the Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria (where Wyatt lives) and was intrigued. She started watching more and more clips of Allen and reading whatever she could find about her, and now adores the nasally television pioneer. "Maybe it's the voice," says the slightly squeaky Wyatt with a laugh.

Adrienne Onofri, one of BroadwayWorld's original columnists, created and writes the Gypsy of the Month feature on the website. She also does interviews and event coverage for BroadwayWorld, and is a member of the Drama Desk. Adrienne is also a travel writer and the author of Walking Brooklyn: 30 Tours Exploring Historical Legacies, Neighborhood Culture, Side Streets, and Waterways, published by Wilderness Press.

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