Love the 'Mrs. Doubtfire' movie? Here's why you should see the musical in Providence

The stage door experience surprised Rob McClure the most.

Night after night, he’d remove the prosthetics and makeup required as the plump older lead in “Mrs. Doubtfire” and slip out the door to find fans waiting. But they didn’t just want an autograph.

“They wanted a hug!” McClure says.

“Mrs. Doubtfire,” a musical based on the 1993 movie starring Robin Williams and Sally Field about a divorcing man who secretly becomes a nanny to be near his children, opens Tuesday at Providence Performing Arts Center.

“I finally get to tell the story I feel so strongly about,” says McClure, who stars opposite his real-life wife, Maggie Lakis.

The permeating message of "Mrs. Doubtfire," Lakis adds, is love and the importance of family.

“I’ve had friends whose parents were divorced and were so moved by the movie,” she says. “And, the ending isn’t about parents getting back together, but finding a way to be happy.”

The musical version goes even further into the emotional side of divorce, she says.

“As long as there’s love, it’s all about how you define family,” Lakis says. “You make your own family.”

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For today’s audiences, the pandemic that shut down the production twice underscores its theme about the lengths to which people will go to be with those they love. Daniel, McClure’s character, is desperate to see his three children. While the court decides whether he is fit to see them – something his estranged wife questions – he draws on theatrical experience to become an older nanny hired to mind them.

Williams’ take on the character of Mrs. Doubtfire was alternately hysterical and heartbreaking, and while it inspires McClure, he calls his interpretation of Daniel unique.

“Robin Williams’ style of comedy is subversive – you laugh until you can’t laugh anymore and then suddenly you’re crying,” McClure says. “I’m not a tribute act, but every frame of the movie is embedded inside my eyeballs. I’m looking to channel the way he made me feel, not looking or sounding like him.”

The addition of music allows the stage production to delve deeper and hit even more powerfully. Many scenes in the musical, McClure says, were rescued from the film's cutting room floor, where they landed to make way for Williams’ improvisation.

“The emotional core of what’s going on for those kids is why it lands so beautifully as a musical,” he says.

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The number “Just Pretend,” for example, examines Daniel’s interaction with his eldest daughter on the courthouse steps when she begs him to pretend to love her mom so the family can stay together.

“A musical knows what to do with that sort of emotion,” McClure says, adding that the play “has all the points you love in the movie, but woven in between is a brand-new musical.”

Audiences, Lakis adds, enjoy how the play “smartly expands on the family’s role” from the beginning when her character sings about Daniel’s failure to meet her halfway to make the marriage work. Other points show the drama more through the children’s eyes, she says.

“It’s very intimate and different enough that we hope the audience will go on a ride with us,” she says.

Part of the ride for McClure includes 31 head-to-toe transformations from man to portly older woman. These – with backstage help from his four-person “Indy 500 pit crew” – are made in as few as 18 seconds. The longest time he has to don pads, face prosthetics and wig is 90 seconds.

“You know in the movie that he’d race into the other room and they’d yell ‘Cut!’” McClure laughs, referring to a restaurant scene when Daniel must make several restroom changes into his alter ego to perpetuate the ruse. “The stakes are much higher here, and the audience is sweating with me, thinking ‘Is he going to make it?’”

He does, every time, and such transformations are part of the allure of “Mrs. Doubtfire.”

If you go ...

What: "Mrs. Doubtfire"

Where: Providence Performing Arts Center, 220 Weybosset St., Providence

When: Oct. 17-22

Tickets: $38-$80

Info: ppacri.org, (401) 421-2787

This article originally appeared on The Providence Journal: 'Mrs. Doubtfire' musical brings new take on classic film to Providence