Neil Patrick Harris to return to Broadway — to act

NEW YORK — Neil Patrick Harris is returning to the stage — and not to hand out awards.

The four-time Tony Award host and former “Doogie Howser, M.D.” will star on Broadway in the spring as the gender-bent rock chanteuse at the center of “Hedwig and the Angry Inch,” the cult musical that was made into a cult movie.

The rest of the creative team members, cast, dates and the theater will be announced later.

Written by John Cameron Mitchell and composer Stephen Trask, “Hedwig” was an unlikely hit fashioned out of a strange story: a tale of obsession, glam rock, a botched sex-change operation and a quest for identity.

Mitchell starred in an off-Broadway production that played for two years starting in 1998 in the dilapidated ballroom of an ancient Greenwich Village hotel and reprised the role in a 2001 film version. In a statement, Mitchell said: “Who better to pass the wig to but the finest entertainer of his generation?”

Harris, the 40-year-old “How I Met Your Mother” star, has been featured in three Broadway productions, including “Assassins,” “Proof” and as the exuberant master of ceremonies in “Cabaret.”

In a statement, Harris said: “I am simultaneously ecstatic and terrified to be stepping into Hedwig’s heels. It is truly a once-in-a-lifetime role and I can’t wait to begin the journey.”