Published on: Sep 26, 2014

Hedwig and the Angry Inch 2014

 

 

Hedwig and the Angry Inch is a rock musical about a fictional rock and roll band fronted by an East German transgender singer. The text is by John Cameron Mitchell, and the music and lyrics are by Stephen Trask. The musical premiered in 1998 and has been performed throughout the world in hundreds of stage productions.

Neil Patrick Harris will star in the first Broadway production at the Belasco Theatre, opening on March 29, 2014 (previews) and expected to run through August 17. The director is Michael Mayer with musical staging by Spencer Liff. Kinky Boots star, Lena Hall, joined the cast in January 2014 to play Yitzhak, Hedwig’s husband.

The story draws on Mitchell’s life as the son of a U.S. Army Major General who once commanded the U.S. sector of occupied West Berlin. The character of Hedwig was originally inspired by a German divorced U.S. Army wife who was a Mitchell family babysitter and moonlighted as a prostitute at her Junction City, Kansas trailer park home. The music is steeped in the androgynous 1970s glam rock era of David Bowie (who co-produced the Los Angeles production of the show), as well as the work of John Lennon and early punk godfathers Lou Reed and Iggy Pop.

The musical opened Off-Broadway at the Jane Street Theater on February 14, 1998. The theater was located in the ballroom of the Hotel Riverview, which once housed the surviving crew of the Titanic (a fact which figured in the original production). Originally directed and produced by Peter Askin, the play won a Village Voice Obie Award and the Outer Critics Circle Award for Best Off-Broadway Musical. The Off-Broadway production ran for two years, and was remounted with various casts by the original creative team in Boston, Los Angeles, and London.

 

Neil Patrick Harris OUT Magazine 03/11/2014

 

The character of Hedwig was originally a supporting character in the piece. She was loosely inspired by a German female babysitter/prostitute who worked for Mitchell’s family when he was a teenager in Junction City, Kansas. The character of Tommy, originally conceived as the main character, was based on Mitchell himself: both were gay, the sons of an Army general, deeply Roman Catholic and fascinated by mythology. Hedwig became the story’s protagonist when Trask encouraged Mitchell to showcase their earliest material in 1994 at NYC’s drag-punk club Squeezebox, where Trask headed the house band and Mitchell’s boyfriend, Jack Steeb, played bass.

They agreed the piece should be developed through band gigs in clubs rather than in a theater setting in order to preserve a rock energy. Mitchell was deeply influenced by Squeezebox’s roster of drag performers that performed rock covers. The setlists of Hedwig’s first gigs included many covers with lyrics rewritten by Mitchell to tell Hedwig’s story: Fleetwood Mac’s “Oh Well”, Television’s “See No Evil”, Wreckless Eric’s “Whole Wide World”, Yoko Ono’s “The Death of Samantha”, Pere Ubu’s “Non-Alignment Pact”, Cher’s “Half Breed”, David Bowie’s “Boys Keep Swinging”, Mott the Hoople’s “All the Young Dudes”, and the Velvet Underground’s “Femme Fatale”. A German glam rendition of Debby Boone’s “You Light Up My Life” once served as the musical’s finale.

Mitchell’s second gig was as fill-in host at Squeezebox on a bill featuring singer Deborah Harry of Blondie. It was for this occasion that Mike Potter first designed Hedwig’s trademark wig, which was initially constructed from toilet paper rolls wrapped with synthetic blond hair. Mitchell, Trask and the band Cheater (Jack Steeb, Chris Weilding, Dave McKinley and Scott Bilbrey) continued to workshop material at venues such as Fez Nightclub and Westbeth Theater Center for four years before premiering the completed musical Off-Broadway in 1998.

The story is told by Hedwig directly to the audience in the form of an extended monologue. The concept of the stage production is that the audience is watching the character Hedwig’s musical act as she follows rockstar Tommy Gnosis’s (much more successful) tour around the country. Occasionally Hedwig references Gnosis’s concert which is playing in an adjoining venue.

Hedwig’s band (including the character of Yitzhak) appears on stage for practically the entire duration of the musical, as does Hedwig herself.

Hedwig tells of Hansel, an East German “slip of a girlyboy” who loves philosophy and rock music, is stuck in East Berlin until he meets Luther Robinson, a U.S. soldier. Luther falls in love with Hansel and the two decide to marry. This plan will allow Hansel to leave communist East Germany for the capitalist West. However, in order to be married, the couple must consist of a man and a woman. Hansel’s mother, Hedwig, gives her child her name and passport and finds a doctor to perform a sex change. The operation is botched, however, and her surgically constructed vagina heals closed, leaving Hansel – now Hedwig – with a dysfunctional one-inch mound of flesh between her legs, “with a scar running down it like a sideways grimace on an eyeless face.”

Hedwig goes to live in Junction City, Kansas as Luther’s wife. On their first wedding anniversary, Luther leaves Hedwig for another man. That same day, it is announced that the Berlin Wall has fallen and Germany will reunite.

Hedwig recovers from the separation by forming a rock band composed of Korean-born Army wives, which she names “The Angry Inch”. Hedwig befriends a shy and misunderstood Christian teenager Tommy Speck, with whom she writes some songs. Hedwig gives him the stage name “Tommy Gnosis”, but he later leaves her and goes on to become a wildly-successful rock star with the songs Hedwig wrote alone and with him. “Internationally ignored” Hedwig and her band the Angry Inch are forced to support themselves by playing coffee bars and strip mall dives.

The song “The Origin of Love”, based on Aristophanes’ speech in Plato’s Symposium, explains that three sexes of human beings once existed: “children of the sun” (man and man attached), “children of the earth” (woman and woman attached), and “children of the moon” (man and woman attached). Each were once round, two-headed, four-armed, and four-legged beings. Angry gods split these early humans in two, leaving the separated people with a lifelong yearning for their other half. Hedwig believes that Tommy is her soul mate and that she cannot be whole without him. She feels driven to either reunite with him or destroy him.

“Tear Me Down” “The Origin of Love” “Random Number Generation” (cast album only) “Sugar Daddy” “The Angry Inch” “Wig in a Box” “Wicked Little Town” “The Long Grift” “Hedwig’s Lament” “Exquisite Corpse” “Wicked Little Town (Reprise)” “Midnight Radio”

Buy Your Own CD
Hedwig And The Angry Inch: Original Cast Recording Best Price Here …CD
Hedwig And The Angry Inch: Original Cast Recording John Cameron Mitchell, Stephen Trask

Song Covers in 2003, Chris Slusarenko’s Off Records released an album called Wig in a Box, a charity tribute album which also included new material adding to the mythology of Hedwig. Performers included Frank Black and The Breeders. Slusarenko said that he fielded questions from Kim Deal of The Breeders about Black, her former bandmate in The Pixies, with whom she’d had limited conversation since the band’s breakup in 1993. They made contact soon after, and Pixies reunited the following spring. Other bands who participated in “Wig in a Box” were Yo La Tengo featuring Yoko Ono, Sleater-Kinney featuring Fred Schneider (of The B-52’s), Jonathan Richman, Rufus Wainwright, Polyphonic Spree, Spoon, Imperial Teen, Bob Mould, Cyndi Lauper with The Minus Five (featuring Peter Buck of R.E.M.), The Bens (Ben Folds, Ben Lee and Ben Kweller), They Might Be Giants and Robyn Hitchcock. Trask and Mitchell completed an unfinished Tommy Gnosis song (leftover from the musical’s development days) called “Milford Lake” (sung by Mitchell) and included it. The CD also features comedian Stephen Colbert reciting the spoken introduction to Tear Me Down. The profits of this album benefitted The Hetrick-Martin Institute, home of the Harvey Milk High School, a New York City public school for gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and questioning youth who have experienced discrimination and violence in other public schools or at home and are at risk of not completing their secondary education.

“Follow My Voice: With the Music of Hedwig”, a documentary about the making of the “Wig in a Box” benefit cd, profiled students from the Harvey Milk School. It was directed by Katherine Linton and produced by the Sundance Channel and is now available on DVD.

The gothic metal band Type O Negative covered “Angry Inch” on their 2003 album Life Is Killing Me.

Meat Loaf covered “Tear Me Down” that same year on his album Couldn’t Have Said It Better, modifying some of the lyrics (notably the spoken section about the Berlin Wall) so that the song is instead about Texas and Meat Loaf’s own life.

One of the bonus tracks of Damn Skippy, “Pirate In A Box” by Lemon Demon, is a parody of Wig In a Box.

Ben Jelen covered Hedwig’s version of “Wicked Little Town” on his 2004 album Give It All Away.

Future Kings of Spain covered “Angry Inch” for the b-side of their 2003 single, “Hanging Around”.

Dar Williams, who is a college friend of composer Stephen Trask, covered “Midnight Radio” on her 2008 album Promised Land.

Directed by Michael Mayer, the 2014 Broadway production will begin previews on March 29 at the Belasco Theatre, with an official opening set for April 22.