THE AMERICAN MOVIE MUSICAL lives! And it's been saved by the unlikeliest of heroes, a partial transsexual whose journey toward self-acceptance takes us from the wilds of East Germany to the trailer parks of Kansas, to the chain of seafood restaurants where his/her band performs, and beyond. ‘Hedwig’ soars past
first-blush absurdityThe hit musical wins hearts by
humanizing an unlikely protagonistReview By Scott Vogel
svogel@starbulletin.comThis was not supposed to be.
Musicals, after all, are sugary-sweet confections set against cartoon backdrops, as artificial at their core as they are reassuring in their escapism.
Content to follow the exploits of star-crossed lovers or, more rarely, tackle real-world issues like prejudice and racism, the classic musicals are gaily painted dinosaurs, fascinating museum pieces but largely irrelevant.
So what are we to make of Hansel, a singer whose rock career was set in motion by a botched sex-change operation (the surgeon was drunk), a procedure that neglects to remove the entire offending organ, leaving an "angry inch"? And what of his back-story, his love affair with an American GI who requests the operation, his mother who supports the sex change, Hansel's (now Hedwig's) migration to the American Midwest and his subsequent dumping by the aforementioned GI?Well, it's absurd, obviously, but only at first glance. Among the more brilliant achievements of "Hedwig and the Angry Inch," which has been making its way around the country and finally opens today at Signature Dole Cannery, is the way the film lovingly humanizes its hero/heroine. As a result, what might have seemed ludicrous comes off as oddly affecting.
This is due in no small part to Stephen Trask's music. Originally developed in the clubs of New York's TriBeCa, "Hedwig" eventually transferred to Off Broadway, where it became a surprise hit, playing for over a year at the Jane Street Theater. Trask and John Cameron Mitchell (the writer, director and star) constantly revised and rewrote the music for Hedwig's band (also called the Angry Inch), and what they settled on were 13 of the best tunes in recent years -- at least by the standards of musical theater. The soaring ballad "Origin of Love," for instance, is both a gorgeous song and a hilarious reworking of a story in Plato's "Symposium" about the earth's original inhabitants:
They had two sets of arms, two sets of legs
They had two faces peering out of one giant head
So they could watch all around them as they talked while they read
And they never knew nothing of love.
Needless to say, hermaphroditism is a strong theme here, but so is the ruinous effect of lacerating self-criticism, Hedwig coming to terms with both physical and emotional limitations. From his German beginnings, when he grew up listening to what he calls the American masters -- people like Toni Tennille, Cher, Debby Boone -- there's a funny, self-mocking tone to the tale, but also a sobering undercurrent of sadness. From these humble beginnings it's just a hop, skip and jump to Hedwig's exile in America where he struggles for meaning as the leader of a rock band on the slow track to superstardom.
As he puts it in the song "Wig in a Box," it's a path lined with depression and ennui "as the lights go down across the trailer park." Hedwig's not-terribly-original method of self-medication has been to become someone else:
I put on some makeup, turn on the 8-track,
I'm pulling the wig down from the shelf,
Suddenly I'm Miss Farrah Fawcett from TV,
Until I wake up, then I turn back to myself.
And as he tries to put his life back together, tragedy strikes again, this time in the form of a fellow singer named Tommy Gnosis who steals Hedwig songs ("He took the good stuff and ran") and becomes the glam-rocker he'll never be. Alternately whimsical and mordant, the tone of such moments cannot really be captured in words; hence we get elegant elegies like "Hedwig's Lament," in which he sings of losing "a piece of my" -- long pause -- "heart."
But as played with deadly seriousness by Mitchell, Hedwig is the consummate survivor -- he'll be around with the cockroaches after a nuclear winter -- and his will to live is, while wacky, surprisingly moving. Like no other film since "The Rocky Horror Picture Show," "Hedwig" should become a lightning rod for every young misfit who's ever sought out a cult film for consolation. And it may well garner a few fans from the "South Pacific"/"My Fair Lady" crowd, not to mention anyone else willing to forgive Hedwig his surface oddities. It would be a shame if one didn't, for the rocker's eventful life has much to teach:
I look back on where I'm from, look at the world that I've become, and the strangest things seem suddenly routine.
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