Alan Tudyk

Alan Tudyk will tackle many famous Monty Python skits at Town Hall.

MEET Monty Python’s red-headed stepchild: Alan Tudyk.

The beloved character actor, most recognized from Joss Whedon’s critically acclaimed space-Western “Firefly,” somehow landed the role of his dreams in “Spamalot” a few years ago and is now taking on Python’s famous Dead Parrot sketch.

“Originally I didn’t want to do it,” says Tudyk, 38. “It’s the iconic sketch, it’s the one that most people know and the one that people have opinions on. It’s held in this place of reverence, and I honestly didn’t want to step on people’s memories of it — now it’s something I can’t wait to do.”

Tudyk will get six shots at it starting next Tuesday when he joins Jeff B. Davis, Rick Holmes, Jane Leeves and Jim Piddock onstage at Town Hall through Oct. 10 in “An Evening Without Monty Python,” a 40th-anniversary tribute to the iconic UK comedy troupe.

The four will reprise the roles made famous by John Cleese, Graham Chapman, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Terry Jones and Michael Palin in about a dozen sketches and songs, directed by former Python, Idle and B.T. McNicholl.

“It’s such a simple sketch,” he says of the classic bit in which an angry patron attempts to return a dead parrot to the shopkeeper who sold it to him. He bought it in the first place when the salesmen explains that the bird was motionless because, “He was shagged out after a long squawk.”

Tudyk is no stranger to the Broadway. Besides his 2005 six-month stint in “Spamalot” as Sir Lancelot, he most recently appeared in the revival of “Prelude to a Kiss.”

He found out about the weeklong Monty Python tribute about a year ago, when he was a guest at a dinner party thrown by Idle.

He was dumbfounded and grateful for the offer. Idle, in fact, was a major influence on Tudyk, who re-enacted Python sketches with his friends in high school.

When Idle finally called to tell him he had landed the part in “Spamalot,” Tudyk saved the message on his answering machine for years — until someone erased it.

“I still have the machine, though,” he jokes.

The key to performing Python, he says, is not to do an impression of any of the original cast members. “You can’t throw it out completely; they wrote the sketches a certain way. But you have to infuse each one with yourself, you have to honor the writing and bring yourself into the character.”

A tricky task when the material is so beloved that most of the audience is sitting in the dark mouthing the lines along with the actors.

“It’s like any good writing,” he says. “There are plenty of plays that were written a long time ago that can be given life again.”

Yet the parrot remains quite dead, but there’s some comfort in that.

“It’s so absurd,” says Tudyk. “I mean, it’s just nailed to its perch.”