Mrs. Doubtfire (1993), one of the ultimate Robin William’s ’90s vehicles — chock full of his expert improv and run by fruitings — is everyone’s favorite poignant story about fatherhood, masculinity and learning life after love. It is also the greatest film ever made that deals with lighthearted fraud, trespassing, manipulation and drag. 

Now, you can watch it all again in the flesh, this time with a specific emphasis on the “hip old nanny who can be-bop and hip-hop and dance ‘til you drop,” as the titular character refers to herself, when the musical version takes the stage in Eugene at the Hult Center, Nov. 21 through 23. 

Mrs. Doubtfire follows Daniel Hillard, a loving father and incompetent husband. After his wife leaves him and takes custody of his children, Hillard takes the desperate times call for desperate measures of secretly posing as an elderly Scottish woman to be hired as his kid’s nanny. 

As they say, hijinks ensue.

Craig Allen Smith, who portrays the title character in the national touring cast, says that in the musical “there’s a lot of tribute paid to the original movie in terms of lines, and moments that audiences love. There’s certainly a respect of nostalgia for Robin Williams and his performance,” but he adds that “at the same time, there’s lots of fun new things for new audiences to see.”

The musical adds on about half-an-hour to the movie, and includes more scenes between the social worker and Hillard’s brother and brother-in-law who use their makeup skills to bring Mrs. Doubtfire to life. “There’s a little bit more fleshed out in terms of side story line, rather than just all about Daniel,” Smith says.

Smith says that “even if you haven’t seen the movie, it’s still fun for audiences of all ages.”

As far as getting into the very layered role of a middle-aged-man playing an elderly Scottish woman, Smith says that it hasn’t been easy considering he’s been working with the director of the original Broadway production, Jerry Zaks. When he auditioned for the part of Mrs. Doubtfire in front of Zaks, Smith says he actually didn’t realize who he was, which “was probably for the best, because he’s a four-time Tony Award winning director.”

He says that Zaks taught him how to embody Mrs. Doubtfire. “There’s a nuance with Mrs. Doubtfire, a certain femininity that comes across because she’s an older lady,” he says, so Zaks told him that “you have to treat her like you would an older lady.”

Smith says that when he got the part, he got his face scanned to create a rubber mask lazer-fit to his face. The rest of the costume involves “dresses and cardigans and a mask and a wig and the glasses and all the other accouterments,” he says. He also wears lots of padding to fill out Mrs. Doubtfire’s stomach and breasts (which “feel like a pillow”), and short inch-and-a-half heels that informs allow him to hobble like an older woman, “but at the same time, she can cut loose, because it’s really just Daniel inside,” Smith says. 

This has been easy for him, because he has experience playing Dr. Frank N. Furter in his community theater’s production of The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

For Mrs. Doubtfire’s obnoxious, flamboyantly bad Scottish accent, Smith says that he’s been doing it since the movie came out when he was a kid, and has perfected it by working loosely with a dialect coach for the show. He says he was taught “some Scottish diction things, but at the same time, Daniel is just an actor pretending to be a nanny,” meaning there was no worry about perfecting his chops.

Smith says that when it comes to the almost dual-role of Daniel Hillard, he’s drawing as much from his own life as he is from William’s performance. He’s a divorced father of two 19-year-old boys, and in portraying this role, he says that “it’s been very therapeutic for me.” He says that, “I had a lot of guilt as the boys were younger, for not being there as much as I had wanted to be. I wanted to be with them every day, just like Daniel does.” 

He says that through Mrs. Doubtfire, he’s learned that when it comes to divorced families, “The focus should always be on the children, but at the same time, the parents need to learn that they’re doing the best that they can. And knowing that now I wish I’d given myself a little bit more grace when my kids were younger, that I was doing the best I could.”

You can check out Craig Allen Smith’s laser fit mask and watch him dance with a vacuum cleaner in Mrs. Doubtfire the musical at the Hult Center during the weekend before Thanksgiving.

Mrs. Doubtfire is 8 pm Friday, Nov. 21, 2 pm and 8 pm Saturday, Nov. 22, and 1 pm and 6:30 pm Sunday, Nov. 23 at the Hult Center. Tickets start at $44 and are available at HultCenter.org.