Grinch by inch

Iceland's Stefan Karl took the long road from 'LazyTown' to center stage as everyone's favorite meanie

Stefan Karl jokes with 10-year-old Maya Gordon, who plays Cindy-Lou Who in ''Dr. Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas!'' (Jay Premack for the Boston Globe)

They had gathered at the Holiday Inn restaurant here on Friday night, Stefan Karl's first as the Grinch, to celebrate his performance. The actor clinked his glass.

With his family gathered around him, Karl began a toast, during which he pulled out a small black box and handed it to his New York agent, Nancy Carson. Inside she found a bracelet adorned by the word "Wisdom" from Karl's native Iceland. Clients have given Carson gifts before, but this night, she said, was special.

"It was such a long journey for Stefan," she said. "It was important I be there."

For Karl, the journey had indeed been a difficult one. With his wife and four children, he had moved to California in 2005 from Iceland, where he'd become a star of Nickelodeon's live-action cartoon show "LazyTown." He was ready to make the leap to performing in the United States, and last year he scored his first American starring role, in the San Diego version of "Dr. Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas! The Musical." But it wasn't to be. Karl didn't get a green card in time, and he wasn't allowed to take the part. The setback nearly led him to give up on his dream and return to Reykjavik.

"It seemed like it was all coming together for me, so when the shock came, I thought it was over," Karl said during a recent interview in his dressing room at the Hippodrome Theatre here. "I thought about my family. How much more can I put them through?"

Carson and his wife talked him out of quitting, though, and in July, his working permit came through. The actor is now getting his chance, coming to the Citi Wang Theatre on Wednesday in the touring production of "How the Grinch Stole Christmas!"

It is a big break for Karl, 33, but those who cast him in the musical say it won't be his last.

"I've never seen anybody like this guy," said Jack O'Brien, the Tony Award-winning director who launched "How the Grinch Stole Christmas!" a decade ago at the Old Globe Theatre in San Diego and saw it become a hit on Broadway. "This sort of talent only comes around once in a generation."

Karl has been called the Icelandic Jim Carrey. Anybody who has watched him on Nickelodeon as Robbie Rotten, the emotionally erratic, junk food-pushing antagonist of "LazyTown," knows his physical gifts: the elastic physical movements, the facial gymnastics, the dynamic vocal range.

In person, Karl comes across as something between Rotten and a playful, "Big"-era Tom Hanks. He's tall, with dark hair, piercing blue eyes, and a thick, square jaw. Karl still has an Icelandic accent, though his English has been steadily improving - so much so that backstage, he slips into a spot-on Richard Nixon. And physically, nothing has ever been lost in translation.

In his dressing room, Karl talks about his long road to the American stage. He was born in Iceland, the son of a laborer who did not go to college. But Karl found himself drawn to the arts.

As a boy, he loved the comedy of Abbott and Costello, Spike Jones, and Dick Van Dyke. A self-described outsider, Karl would sing and make jokes in class.

"My teachers would either say, 'Stefan, when you open up on Broadway, make sure you invite us' or they'd say, 'You're never going to make anything of yourself if you don't concentrate.' "

His parents always encouraged him, and by his early teens, Karl was working in community theater. He attended the Drama Academy of Iceland and in 1999 earned a contract from the National Theatre. He ended up being cast as Rotten in the company's stage show of "LazyTown," which went on to become the popular TV series, aired in dozens of countries around the world.

With his prosthetically enhanced chin and ducktail of black hair, Rotten is the show's villain, living underground and trying to keep the health-freak hero Sportacus and the cheery Stephanie from pumping life into the town. Rotten wants LazyTown to stay lazy.

"The whole idea was to create this comical bad guy, but one who didn't scare the kids," said Brown Johnson, president of animation for Nickelodeon/MTVN Kids and Family Group. "He was perfect."

Karl played Rotten for four years, until "LazyTown" stopped shooting new episodes two years ago. The show still airs twice a day on Nickelodeon's preschool network, "Noggin."

Karl worried whether he would be pigeonholed as Rotten, but he retains a fondness for the character. In Baltimore, a small picture of Rotten remained on his dressing-room door.

"I left before I wanted to kill him," Karl says of Rotten. "And Robbie made me who I am, just as I made him."

In fact, Karl has ultimately made his breakthrough by moving from playing one cartoonish, non-threatening villain to another.

He credits Carson, who represented Julianna Rose Mauriello, the American actress who played Stephanie in "LazyTown," with helping him make the leap to the United States. There are typically no agents in Iceland. So it wasn't until he spoke with her on the set of "LazyTown" in 2004 that Karl considered the idea of coming to America.

"I thought I would never have the chance," Karl says. "She basically did all the hard work for me."

Karl moved to Los Angeles and then, last year, to San Diego anticipating the Grinch run. That's where Karl lives with his wife and their children, who range in age from 6 months to 13.

He already knew the Grinch role well, from having the Dr. Seuss book read to him as a boy and seeing Carrey's performance in Ron Howard's 2000 film of the Christmas tale.

"What I found so great about his performance is the facial expressions," he says. "It's something I'm really trying to do, to create that Grinchy frown and his smart face and his sad face."

When Karl was cleared this summer, the producers were eager to bring him in.

"Stefan is sort of like a never-ending bag of tricks. He's kind of like casting five or six actors," said Matt August, who is directing the production. "He can hit all the really really low notes in the show, which we put in there specifically for the actor who played it last year. But then Stefan during rehearsals did something that literally stopped the room cold when he went up higher than most of our female sopranos. That's something that you never hear of in male actors. You certainly don't hear them doing it well."

August says Karl's range of talents make him ideal for this part. "Stefan brings to the role of the Grinch all of the nuanced emotional sensitivities of an accomplished film actor," August says. "He's got the physical elasticity of the most entertaining professional clowns, and he's like working with a human foley machine: He can make the most extraordinary sounds with his voice."

What happens when the show closes after Christmas? Karl doesn't know. He has heard a "LazyTown" film is in the works, and would consider playing Rotten, depending on whether he liked the script. He wants to work in TV, on Broadway, and in movies.

"Now we have to see what happens," says Karl. "Basically for me, it's starting from scratch."

Geoff Edgers can be reached at gedgers@globe.com.