Stage adaptation lite

The creators of “Wigfield” -- Amy Sedaris, Paul Dinello and Stephen Colbert -- say they are “not soliciting reviews” for their new theater event based on their recently published comedy book “Wigfield: The Can-Do Town That Just May Not,” the story of a backwater burg in crisis as seen through the eyes of Russell Hokes, a highway line painter who has decided to write his first book. Compared to line painting, how hard could it be?

The trio from Comedy Central -- whose credits include “Strangers With Candy,” “Exit 57” and “The Daily Show With Jon Stewart” -- say they un-solicit reviews because the show is different each time they do it.

“It’s more than a reading and less than a play,” Colbert says of the show, which will be presented Friday and Saturday at North Hollywood’s El Portal Theatre. “If we were going to have reviews, we would look at the structure in more detail. The audience seems to have a good time, but is this a fully crafted play? We don’t want to invite this criticism.”

Since the show began its nationwide tour in May, critics have for the most part accepted the dis-invitation to express their opinions -- though one Russell Scott Smith of the New York Post, while grudgingly acknowledging the performers’ “weird charm,” also felt compelled to describe a “Wigfield” performance as “really just an excuse for three of Manhattan’s funniest -- and snarkiest -- comics to lampoon a bunch of hicks.”

But reviews -- solicited -- for the book have been positive, if a bit strange: “Think of this brilliant bilious book as Lake Wobegon without the gentle humor, homespun wisdom, or lake,” Entertainment Weekly says. And performances of “Wigfield” (which, despite the title, has nothing at all to with a farm where hairpieces are grown) have sold out in those backwater towns of Chicago and New York.

Suffice it to say that “Wigfield” looks to be that sort of one-of-a-kind comedy show that if you’re not there, well, you aren’t in the audience. Plus, it’s going to cost theatergoers $35 even if they don’t buy a copy of the book (Hyperion, $22.95 hardcover) or one of Sedaris’ $2 cupcakes, both on sale after the performance.

But, to be serious -- they’re not, hardly ever. Serious, that is. The comedy trio say they hope that the stage show “Wigfield,” which Colbert calls a cross between a book tour and a play, will make audiences laugh.

“We tried to write the book as best we could, and there are parts of it that are challenging and satirical and have sort of intellectual twists of language,” Colbert offers in an unsolicited review of his own work in a conference call from New York. “But I hope people, more than anything else,” come out of the theater saying: ‘That was really funny.’ ”

The book’s authors say they created the show out of necessity. When they eagerly asked their publisher whether a book tour was planned, Hyperion replied with something along the lines of “no.” So they got in touch with Westbeth Entertainment, which is producing the stage show, and suggested they’d like to do their own book tour.

“And it sort of grew as we went along -- we said, ‘Let’s not do a book tour, let’s book ourselves into actual theaters and kind of craft it as an actual show,’ ” Colbert says. “ ‘Let’s show the photographs, let’s sort of actually do characters.’ That’s how it evolved into what it is now.”

That story, however, does not take enough web-footed Darwinian steps backward on the evolutionary chain to explain the existence of the book, which started with a worm.

“Originally, I wanted to do a children’s book about a worm,” reminisces Sedaris, younger sister of writer David Sedaris and best known to TV audiences as Jerri Blank, the 46-year-old high school freshman of “Strangers With Candy,” a spoof of all those treacly after-school specials. “And I called Paul Dinello with the idea about 15 minutes before I was going to have the meeting with Hyperion.

“Basically, it was about a worm who was trying to discover what kind of worm he is. As it turns out, he’s a tequila worm. And the story turns out to be about alcoholism, and reaching for the lowest star possible. And Hyperion is there with their knitted brow, and they’re like: ‘Oh ... uh, anything else?’ ”

Sedaris and Dinello were literally on their way out the door, she says, when they blurted out the loosely formed idea of the saga of a small town in crisis. Next thing they knew, they had their first book deal. Then the two called Colbert, their collaborator of more than 10 years, since their days with Chicago’s Second City comedy troupe. Colbert had the idea of basing their tale on the real-life town of Jefferson, W.Va., the kind of place from which you might receive a colorful postcard reading: “Wish you were here instead of me.”

Humor from a small town

Colbert, who had spent a whirlwind 24 hours with the residents of Jefferson, says he doesn’t know how aware they are that their world, or one very much like it, is now immortalized on stage. “I don’t know whether they receive any of the periodicals that have written about the book, or seen the TV shows that we have been on,” Colbert says. “They don’t have a bookstore other than Crazy Mitch’s adult bookstore. I don’t know that ‘Wigfield’ is being sold there.

“When Paul and Amy asked me to help them, Jefferson lent a flavor and was a point of departure for Wigfield. It was a town that, like Wigfield, was endangered. It was just strip clubs, porno houses and used-auto-parts places, with competing chiefs of police who would run each other off the road for attempting to imitate the chief of police. The town was endangered because it had been created as a tax dodge by the porno house owners on an unincorporated piece of land in West Virginia.

“The mayor, who was a stripper, ran for mayor on the platform of: ‘Elect me and I’ll dissolve this town.’ And she won. And the town council, who were all the porno house owners, fought her and tried to have her arrested for spending $2,000 of the town money at a dollar store; I wonder how many things she bought? The council appointed their own chief of police, and she appointed hers; those were the two competing police chiefs who literally played chicken with their police cars on the road.

“I said, ‘There’s a lot of meat on this bone. Let’s use this as our point of departure.’ ”

The trio departed on the next mental train to Wigfield. The book alternates the desperate, self-obsessed monologue of narrator Russell Hokes, a highway line painter who has decided to write his first book, with Hokes’ interviews with the townspeople and their reactions to impending doom: Built directly in front of a dam, Wigfield is soon to be deluged like Noah’s Ark when the state government tears down the dam to restore a salmon run. Hokes’ panic over writing a 50,000-word book, they say, parallels their own at having committed themselves to that many words for Hyperion.

Sedaris, Dinello and Colbert concocted 20 stage characters from Hokes’ “interviews.” They also donned wigs, costumes, makeup and freaky facial expressions to transform themselves into the various characters, photographed by fashion designer Todd Oldham.

Just as they believe their TV shows appeal to people who don’t usually watch TV, Sedaris, Dinello and Colbert suggest that their stage show draws a young audience that doesn’t attend theater as a general rule. “I like our audiences a lot; we tend to get a lot of misfits,” Sedaris says.

The trio insist they feel great affection for the misfits they portray. “I think we need to expand this to how the three of us feel about people, because sometimes people think that the way comedians look at people is cynical,” Colbert says. “I think we all really like people, and their self-indicting behavior really makes us laugh.

“We love people; they’re hilarious. I really like these people in Jefferson. And some of them look great naked.”

*

‘Wigfield’

Who: Amy Sedaris, Paul Dinello and Stephen Colbert

When: Friday, 8 p.m.; Saturday, 7 and 10 p.m.

Where: El Portal Theater, 5269 Lankershim Blvd., North Hollywood

Ends: Saturday

Price: $35

Contact: (213) 480-3232