Broadway’s Revival of “My Fair Lady”: I Could Have Watched This Shit All Night, Every Nightby Randi / May 31, 2018It’s Theatre Thursday! We’re talking about “Carousel” at Broadway’s Imperial Theatre.
When the current revival of “Carousel” was announced last year, everyone was beside themselves with excitement. With a cast including Jessie Mueller as Julie Jordan, Joshua Henry as Billy Bigelow, and opera diva Renee Fleming as Nettie Fowler, it ranked among the most incredible Broadway news in recent memory. Finally a phenomenal leading role for Josh Henry! Jessie Mueller never disappoints! Renee f-ing Fleming! This cast singing that wonderful, much-loved score? Hopes were insanely high all across the Broadway community, and of course such expectations could not go unfulfilled, right? I mean, this is “Carousel”, one of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s most beloved works and the musical that many (including Time Magazine in 1999) consider the best of the 20th century. Bring this shit on!, we all thought expectantly. Well, a word in that previous sentence applies to this production more than I ever could have guessed.
Despite having some pretty tough-to-fork-up material, director Jack O’Brien does just that, by presenting a lackluster, perplexing version of the musical that is somehow completely devoid of emotion. Is boredom an emotion? Devoid of most emotions. I heard a lot of the complaints on the boards that this production cut a few songs and scenes for no good reason and made some changes that die-hard fans of the musical objected to, but since I had actually never seen a full-fledged production of “Carousel” before, I figured that I wouldn’t know enough to be upset about any changes. So I went in assuming that I would adore this production. I did not. Turns out there is plenty wrong that doesn’t require intense fandom or deep knowledge of the original to recognize.
From the start, I knew someone had some ‘splaining to do. It’s forking called “Carousel” because a lot of the important action centers around one at a carnival (and life is like a merry-go-round too I guess such symbolism) and so when a Broadway production doesn’t actually have a carousel on stage – or virtually anysets at all – you’re asking for disappointment. True, the contraption that came down from the rafters – a sort of cardboard origami light fixture that expanded into a very pretty circle that acted as the suggestion of a carousel (or at least the top section of it) – was an impressive moment of stagecraft and it is a pretty lil bit of paper funtimes that would be excellent decoration in a backyard barbecue, but as the main set piece in a Broadway production it made my stomach hurt like Chidi when making a small decision. It doesn’t help that the show I saw before this was “My Fair Lady”, which has some of the most impressive and imposing set design I’ve ever seen, but seeing the barest of stages here at the Imperial was beyond dissatisfying.
The show begins with the Carousel Waltz, sort of an overture and an introduction to the setting and the story. We’re in coastal Maine in the late 1800s (the show was written in 1945), and we see Billy Bigelow exaggeratedly miming his duties as carnival barker (the “step right up!” job) as the ensemble dances for more than 10 minutes. Choreographer Justin Peck of the New York City Ballet is one of the most famous and esteemed, so in this production it’s clear that O’Brien just let him run wild with SO MUCH BALLET. If you’ve read my past reviews of musicals and ballets, you know that I always want more and more ballet in anything. Even full-on ballets sometimes haven’t had enough dancing for me. This production has too much. It’s not that it isn’t impressive; the problem is that it rarely is doing the job that dance should be doing in musicals: helping to tell the story. Instead, all the excessive ballet seems to be there just for its own sake instead of to further the story.
The first singing comes from Carrie Pipperidge, a role I know well because Audra McDonald won her first Tony for it. The Tony-nominated performer (who is likely to win it this Sunday) playing the role now, Lindsay Mendez, was out, so she must have been pretty darn sick or exhausted considering I was there two weeks before the awards, when voters are coming out in droves. Her understudy, Scarlett Walker, was very impressive, but I am disappointed to have missed probably this production’s best shot at an acting Tony. Anyway, Carrie sings to her best good friend Julie (Mueller) “You’re a Queer One, Julie Jordan” and you’re like this is how the show starts, mmkay. Julie was just yelled at by Mrs. Mullins, the mean old widow (Margaret Colin (Eleanor Waldorf from ‘Gossip Girl’ lolz)) who runs the carousel, because Julie let Billy put his arm around her when she rode the carousel. Mullins is bitter that no one’s putting his arm around her and also it’s the 1800s so I guess it was improper but it all seems a bit silly. After Carrie tells Julie how queer she is, Carrie sings about her new engagement in one of my favorite songs, “Mister Snow”, which is her fiancé’s name. At this point Julie hasn’t really sung and you’re like…is Carrie really the main female character? In this production, she really seems it. Even with an understudy on, Carrie shone much brighter than Julie and seemed to have MUCH more to do. Somehow O’Brien made Julie Jordan seem like the supporting character. That takes effort to make the leading lady seem so unimportant and inconsequential, especially when you have the usually divine Jessie Mueller playing her. But Jessie seems incredibly miscast here. The thought she always puts into her characters seems to be misleading her here (along with her director) and the performance is simply awkward.
Mueller’s unsuitability for this role is amplified like someone was shouting about it with a bullhorn when Billy comes to join the girls. Joshua Henry is a great performer and I’ve loved many of his performances. This is not one of them. Individually, Mueller and Henry are miscast, but thrown together, with all their lack of chemistry and tension and really anything, they’re a disaster. They just don’t work as a couple. I’m sure it must be an extremely big ask to turn down even one of these esteemed performers when you could have both, but that kind of decision making is required for the good of a show.
Even aside from the poor casting and zero chemistry, this production suffers from…the story of “Carousel”. It’s outdated and problematic, and it really doesn’t hold up in modern times, and instead of refocusing the story or using different direction techniques to reframe it, this production presents the old story straight. After the girls sing, Billy comes to join them and he tells off Mrs. Mullins and subsequently gets fired. He doesn’t seem to care. Carrie tells Julie that they better get home before curfew at their mill-workers quarters or whatever, but Julie wants Billy to think she’s cool, I guess, so she gets fired too. So these two miscast fools who just lost their jobs so they could stay out a little later and ‘flirt’ (talk to each other with zero emotion) tiptoe around awkwardly and sing one of the best musical theatre songs, “If I Loved You”, beautiful but with zero emotion. It’s a real shame that this song is done such a disservice by being given to this pair. Not the miscast Mueller and Henry – they sound lovely and would even if singing the phone book – but the pair of Julie and Billy. They’re revered as one of the important love stories in musical theatre, but really, they and the story of “Carousel” are a mess. A timid, clumsy girl meets an aggressive, cold man at a carnival and gives up everything because she wants him to love her. After they get fired, they…get married?! And Julie gets pregnant. Billy may claim he does eventually but he never, ever shows any sign of it, instead abusing Julie verbally and physically after they marry because he’s so sad he can’t find a job. Julie always defends his actions, understanding that it’s so hard for him to deal with the pressure of being a provider for his family. The biggest problem of all with this revival is that it doesn’t do anything to reframe their relationship in the modern day and age, and presents all these sentiments as not the products of their time, which they are, but as good enough to stand on their own with no new way of looking at it. It’s presented as fine for Julie to excuse her abuser’s actions because he can’t find a job. It’s not. In the second act, when Billy hits another female member of his family and she defends it as feeling like a kiss instead of a slap, it just lies there again. It’s weird.
If you don’t know the rest of the story, I’ll tell you real quick. After they get married and Billy yells at Julie a lot and hits her and everyone is DEPRESSED ALL THE TIME, Billy’s friend Jigger cooks up a hare-brained scheme for the two of them to rob a rich man. Oh and kill him. Billy at first says nah thanks but after he finds out he’s going to be a father and has nothing to give his kid, he decides to do it. Kids are expensive. And Jigger is super persuasive – Amar Ramasar was one of my favorite parts of this production, mostly because he is given the enormous dance solo that actually feels intentional. Amar is absolutely electric in his dancing and it was the most exhilarating scene of the entire production. Well, tied with Billy’s “Soliloquy”, when he thinks about what having a son, or a daughter, will be like. You know this song; it’s the big “My boy Bill” moment. This is where Henry absolutely shines – it’s helped by the fact that he’s alone on stage and just singing, which is what he does best. His version of this 7-minute epic song, one of the best and most challenging for men in musical theatre, is nearly flawless. He’s great here. It’s a shame that the rest of the performance doesn’t get the chance to live up to it (and given how great he is here, I do blame the director and other aspects and not Henry). His final decision, as he sings “I never knew how to make money but I’ll try! I’ll try! I’ll try! I’ll go out and make it or steal it or take it! Or die!” is riveting and you know one of those things is going to come true. Spoilers (for a 1945 show?? really?): it’s the last one. Jigger’s plan goes awry and the mark fights back long enough for cops to arrive, and instead of getting arrested or killed by cops, Billy kills himself. Julie is distraught, and Billy goes into the afterlife. He’s met by the Starkeeper, one of heaven’s administrative assistants or what not. The Starkeeper tells Billy that he has a chance to go back to earth for one day, to try to redeem himself since he has not earned enough points to get into heaven yet. Listen, Billy is an asshole. I don’t know what a mean abusive jackwagon can do in a day to redeem himself enough for entry into heaven, but I do know that what he does – give a pep talk to his now-grown daughter (time moves suuuuper fast on earth when one is off of it) – does not seem like it should be enough, especially since the tiny pep talk comes after he hits her. Yes Dream Ghost Billy goes back down to earth, watches his daughter do the famous Louise Ballet to introduce her character and her troubles, he meets his daughter, doesn’t tell her who he is obviously because she’s be like um what, but he still F-ING HITS HER, and then at her high school graduation he tells her to believe the words of “You’ll Never Walk Alone”, and that’s enough for him to get into heaven? PUH. LEASE. Also, not to beat the dead horse that is my review of this production, but the Louise Ballet was so upsetting for me. It was actually ugly. I was so disappointed. I get having the dance convey the character’s awkwardness as an outcast teenager, but there are ways to do that without having the dancing be so hideous and disjointed and just unenjoyable. At least it was overly long too.
So yeah, while the score is gorgeous and well sung, the book of “Carousel” is not something that such weak directing and producing can help with when revived today. Fortunately, there are enough highlights in this production to make watching the show bearable and often enjoyable, even through my exasperation. As I said, Ramasar’s Jigger is a highlight, as is Henry’s outstanding “Soliloquy”, even if the rest of his performance left me freezing cold. Carrie Pipperidge and Enoch Snow (our understudy Scarlett Walker and the always great Alexander Gemignani) seem like the main characters because they are the only energetic, charming people on that stage (well, at least until Snow achieves his desired level of success and lets it go straight to his head). And our Nettie Fowler is a consistent bright spot on this bare stage, as Renee Fleming is doing a bangup job in her first Broadway musical role, and seems to be carrying the entire show and company in her warm, loving arms. Her “You’ll Never Walk Alone” is as gorgeous as you’d expect, and although she didn’t say anything about the hucka the bejeepers, her “June is Busting Out All Over” was a joyous romp. She even made the weird song “That was a Real Nice Clambake” (real song title) enjoyable. So yeah, there is a lot wrong with this production, and it’s disappointing that we weren’t given a revival for the ages like we are with the current “My Fair Lady”, especially since it will be a while now before we’ll get another one. But there are some good things about this production (thank god), so it’s not a total loss.
INFORMATION
The front row of the rear mezzanine has a big barricade tight
at your knees with a heavy curtain hanging down it, so you can’t just jump up
and go like I thought you could when I bought the seat. If you are limber, you
are able to slither through the bars and through the curtain’s onto the floor
below like I did instead of waiting for my row to get up because IDGAF what
anyone else thinks (they thought I was bananas though for sure).
Run time is about 2 hours and 40 minutes.
STAGE DOOR
The ensemble comes out pretty quickly and everyone is very
friendly (except Eleanor Waldorf, actually, who was kind of a b word to me).
Renee Fleming actually took selfies which was amazing and she was absolutely
lovely. I called it after an hour waiting for Henry and Mueller, the longest
I’ve ever waited, but I could not defend wasting any more time waiting for
them. I mean I was going to lie to them anyway, so it’s for the best.
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HABIBI Take 2: The Band’s Visit at the Donmar
It’s Theatre Thursday! Today’s show is one of my all-times, The Band’s Visit.
In 2017, I saw a preview of a little Broadway musical based on a little Israeli movie I remembered seeing years and years prior, and for the five years since that night I have rarely gone a day without thinking about how beautiful it was. That’s a long time and a lot of thinking about beauty! No ragrets! For its London premiere at the Donmar, I was hella nervous (this city and its antisemitism, wooof) but need not have been. It was treated with respect, there were no uninformed idiots protesting outside (I had some nightmares), and while it didn’t have all the superb magic of the Broadway run, it was still wonderfully done with still plenty of magic.
Read: Habibi Part 1 (The Broadway review)
The Band’s Visit is the small show that could, a slice of boring life in the Israeli desert where its inhabitants live the same day in and out, waiting for something to change but nothing ever changes, which many people across the world can surely identify with. One day, though, something different happens: a touring Egyptian military band mistakenly arrives in their little one-camel town, having mistaken this town of Bet Hatikva (made up for this show) with their intended destination Petah Tikvah (real place!). Those pesky b’s and p’s! Forced to stay overnight until the next bus, the musicians are put up at various locals’ homes, and relationships are almost-forged, as much as people can connect in almost one evening. Which, as it turns out, is enough to remind us of the importance of human connection.
The beauty of the show that I thought so much about, well, first of all it was mainly the music. This sounds like a nothing story on paper, sure, but David Yazbeck’s music is what brings it alive. With a mix of klezmer, Arabic music, orchestral concertos, all kinds of traditional, lovely sounds from the Middle East, it’s so well considered, so gorgeous and moving, with each melody and lyric serving a purpose, as the best in musical theatre should. This is a show that was clearly edited and discussed to make it the best version of itself it could be, which is probably a good part of why it struck me so deep (so rarely the case!). But also, back up, it’s NOT a nothing story. Itamar Moses (who never got his chance as hosting SNL as the Tony-contender book writers that season were obviously meant to) wrote a subtle, nuanced book that, without you aware in the moment, reminds us of the splendor in everyday life, in interpersonal relationships, in simply humans connecting with other humans. It’s so little and so much all at once, the most important thing in the world presented without a fuss. And the magic of it all is heightened by the fact that we only get a glimpse into each set of characters, each grouping of local Israeli with the Arab musicians they’re hosting. We don’t get full stories or neat conclusions, just glimpses, which makes it all even more relatable, realistic, and touching.
This London production gets bonus points for showing this town what proper representation in a cast can look like: there are actual Israels, Arabs, Jews, Muslims, playing these parts, so it feels authentic and not like, as happens so often here, caricatures. It’s a breath of fresh air to hear stories from the people they’d be about. Everyone is great, but so far into the run they don’t have the same magic connection to the music that the Broadway cast had. Mira Mesika plays Dina, the central character, as much as there is one in a true ensemble piece. Her stage presence and strong singing voice guide the show. Her “Omar Sharif” is gorgeous and when she belted the higher notes it. was. EVERYTHING. The heightened sense of desperation she revealed in her Dina really worked for her interpretation, and her dependable singing was a lovely contrast to Broadway’s Katrina Lenk, although she lacked what made Katrina’s performance so special – that strange mystical physical presence that Katrina used to almost dance through the show, heightening the sense of exoticism and magic.
It’s just different takes, for the most part, and not lack of talent. But I did find myself wishing for the Broadway takes. Our Tewfiq was authoritative and respectable, great especially at the end, but not heartbreaking to the extent Tony Shalhoub was with his adorableness and his sadness. But that’s why Tony is such a big star, that special extra something. Our Haled was fun and very good, but he and the director, I guess, didn’t notice the thing that made Haled on Broadway so effective with just one song that he won a Tony for it: Ari’el Stachel was doing exactly what the song was about – he was melting it. He was actually acting the lyrics: “it’s not about the conversation, the words are like your lips are reaching out to kiss the ears.” When I first saw him on Broadway, I was entranced because it was this otherworldly smooth legato energy coming directly into my ears like a nonstop beam melting the world away. That’s how he won a Tony for singing one song. This Haled was good but was singing the song, not doing the song. It was lovely and fun but wasn’t an act of revolution.
But again these are all tiny tiny differences between the productions, and this one is still fantastic, really served by the tiny stage and intimate theatre. Oh also I think Peter Polyinalltheshows’s iteration of the father character and his song “The Beat of Your Heart” were phenom, excellent stuff. The only slight slight almost a disappointment but of course not really but just a little, is the finale – the Telephone Guy’s song “Answer Me”. This is one of my favorite songs of all time and it lacked a bit of vocal heft here, the strength of the longing and the emotional expression that made Adam Kantor and then the whole cast together leave the audience in tears, feeling their loneliness but all together. It was a stunning theatrical moment that here is lovely and still heart-rending but not heart-breaking in its gloriousness. STILL, I say STILL, this is a wonderful production with a lot of heart and joy and love and I wish I could see it a dozen more times. I’m so glad this beautiful brave little toaster made it here.
INFORMATION
The musical is 100 minutes no intermission, which is…hard! Seriously folks, if you want to call your theatre-making accessible, 100 minutes no intermission is the MAX WE GO. Get over yourself.
The Donmar audience at my show was one of the worst I’ve ever seen! Maybe 2 masks, but we’re used to that by now. No, the horror came from the behavior. People all around talking, not whispering, literally the whole time. People next to us dancing in their seats (when? there are no dance songs!) and making out, it was really just so annoying and honestly I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re to blame for any bits of disappointment I felt. Also the man next to me who AFTER THE SECOND SONG, said to his friend “oh I guess this is a musical”. WAS THAT NECESSARY.
ALSO, unforch, the shows that encourage you to film the curtain call and maybe the finale, moves that we thought would placate the filmers, have instead led to people thinking they can film EVERY show’s finale and curtain call, which you can’t! People! You are here! Live! Experience the live theatre, why must you film everything? jfc put your gd phones away!
Speaking of jfc and gd, the Donmar cancelled the first preview of this run because of the Queen’s death which was…like…a month before the scheduled first preview. They said it pushed the rehearsal/tech process back a day. Which I guess is understandable, but if you have a sold out show, or heavily sold, and then you cancel one, shouldn’t you add in another show? So that people who are suddenly out of tickets – especially since they are likely the people most eager to see the show – can actually see it? I know too many fellow first-preview-ticket-holders who were only able to scrounge up like a terrible back of theatre seat in December. Add a f-ing performance if you cancel the first one, guys! What else could be fair? I’m still very angry even though I was not very affected, it’s the principle of the thing.
Wow this little info section made me really f-ing angry and hateful towards my fellow man, guess I have to see the show again and remember that they aren’t all monsters. But then the audience will prob be monsters, and then I’d be stuck in a vicious cycle! Just be better people!
Broadway’s “Hedwig & The Angry Inch”: Belated Thoughts Plus Current News!
First, the news, which gave me a valid reason to post this review so very much later than I should have. Michael C. Hall (yes, Dexter) will return to the role of Hedwig on Broadway TONIGHT for at least a week! Hall ended his fabulous run a month ago. Producers are saying it’s just for one week (till February 21) but current Hedwig star (and creator) John Cameron Mitchell injured his knee a week ago, and knee injuries are serious, so if he needs more time to rest he should take it. Although it’s a shame that ticket holders for this week’s performances won’t get to see the unparalleled JCM, at least he’s promised to return in due time, so hopefully they can go back later. But for all people in or near New York City who have the chance, run this week to see Michael C. Hall! He is incredible! End news. Begin review.
To everyone’s surprise and delight, “Hedwig & The Angry Inch” is still selling out on Broadway almost a year later. I mean selling out like seats, and necessitating standing room tickets, not ‘selling out’ like abandoning principles. Although, funny stream of consciousness connection time, when a Broadway production was announced, many fans of the super fringe, culty, super off-Broadway original Jane Street production thought that a Broadway run would leave the beloved show overly sanitized to be safer for the regular mainstem (old/white/wealthy) crowd. But it didn’t. It was superb and just as sharp as before, but now available to become beloved by many, many more fans. With current temporary star Michael C. Hall, it’s a must-see.
And I am definitely one of those new fans. I watched the movie version of “Hedwig” in college but wasn’t really paying attention so I didn’t get it and didn’t even realize what amazingness I was watching. But then Neil Patrick Harris brought Hedwig back to life last spring and it won lots of Tonys and it was the hardest ticket to get. Since I like to see everything every season, this was very difficult for me to accept. Luckily I did not have to learn a lesson in not getting everything I want, Broadway edition, because my super awesome friend at Ever the Wayfarer got me ungettable tickets to NPH’s final weekend! Best ever! It was his beautiful performance that made me an obsessive fan of all things Hedwig.
“Hedwig & The Angry Inch” tells the story of a young man named Hansel, a ‘slip of a girly boy’ living with his austere mother in East Berlin before the wall came down. NB, that was the really shitty side. Hansel met Luther, an American soldier, who lured him with lots of candy like he was driving a white van, and made Hansel an offer he couldn’t refuse: to marry him, and thus get out of East Berlin. Obviously, this was happening before gay marriage was allowed anywhere, even in Europe, and so Hansel would have to undergo a sex change operation to pass the physical examination. Hansel’s mother gives him her passport and tells him he can go by her name, Hedwig. And so the new Hedwig goes to surgery, and as you probably can guess from the title, it is botched, to say the least, and he’s “left with a one-inch mound of flesh where my penis used to be, where my vagina never was. It was a one-inch mound of flesh, with a scar running down it like a sideways grimace on an eyeless face.” I freaking love that line and had to share.
So he, now she, Hedwig, is moved to Junction City, Kansas to live with her new husband Luther, who soon leaves her alone, living in a motor home, working a checkout counter, left to watch the fall of the Berlin wall on television too soon after all she went through to escape.
It’s pretty damn depressing. But it gets better like they all say! Because here she is, for her ‘one night only’ Broadway performance (as the show is billed as), made possible by the previous night’s mid-show closing of the first performance of the fictitious “Hurt Locker: The Musical”. To play up this backstory, fake “Hurt Locker” playbills are strewn about the auditorium before every performance, so if you are lucky enough to find one, you should frame it. These fake playbills are HILARIOUS, from the list of songs in the fake musical (including gems like “Won’t you buy my porn DVD” and “Hot Desert Nights!”) to the castlist (including Bobby Cannavale, Taye Diggs, and D’Bree Dazeem (Adele’s sister)) to the standard Playbill “How many have you seen” section all full of made-up and hysterical shows (including “Streep No More”, “SoulCycle On Broadway”, and, my favorite, “Tyler Perry is Madea is Medea”). Whoever made this fake playbill deserved a huge raise if not his or her own Tony. I still can’t get over how incredible it is.
Anyway, Hedwig is here in her one-night only concert, using the Hurt Locker set (a blown up car, lots of pipes and dinginess) and singing her glorious songs for a huge NYC crowd while telling us the rest of her history. After Luther left her, she started babysitting for a kid named Tommy, and together they wrote unbelievable music as they fell in love, a love that has both sustained and plagued Hedwig since. See, as a young boy, Hedwig was enamored with the story of the Origin of Love, based on Aristophanes’ speech in Plato’s Symposium, which tells how humans used to be of three sexes in forms about double what we are now. When the gods got angry and scared of our strength, they split everyone into two, making us the size and shape we are now while simultaneously creating the idea of our ‘other halves’, our soulmates. This is considered the origin of love, as the two people, the two parts, form one whole, and the search for that other half is what will make you complete. It’s really a lovely story, and the performance of this song is my favorite part of the whole show, with superb simple animation projected on a screen.
But Hedwig takes this story a little too seriously, and has been searching for her other half her whole life. She believed she found it in Tommy, but he was reviled by her situation downstairs, and things fell apart. To add insult to injury, Tommy became a famous rock star stealing all the songs they wrote together, which crushed Hedwig. Despite Hedwig’s now marriage to one of her musicians, a male Jewish drag queen named Yitzhak (played to perfection by Lena Hall), and all the time that has passed, she is still heartbroken yearning for Tommy. In addition to Hedwig’s words, the show itself demonstrates her feelings for Tommy, as it begins with the highest energy, like a rock concert. It’s loud and energetic and totally awesome, with “Tear Me Down” and “Sugar Daddy”. But once we hear Hedwig’s anthem, “Wig In A Box”, the dynamic changes and the songs become more personal, more sensitive, more sad.
The fantastic, clever, and intriguing aspect of the story is the ambiguity of the relationship between the characters of Tommy and Hedwig. The set up is that Tommy, a huge rock star, is playing an enormous venue just behind the Belasco, where Hedwig is singing. The venues share a door that repeatedly gets opened by Hedwig or Yitzhak during the show, when we can hear Tommy’s Midwestern voice addressing his adoring fans. Because the actor playing Hedwig also plays Tommy, some people think they are the same person, and that Hedwig’s struggle that she’s been telling us about has really just been within herself. While the latter is definitely true, it seems more widely accepted that they are indeed two different people, but that they are so similar in many ways that they both need to go through this journey, and rather than becoming complete by joining together, they become complete by, in Hedwig’s case, letting the other go and, in Tommy’s case, recognizing how much their relationship meant to him and apologizing for the past. I love how the “Wicked Little Town Reprise”, after Hedwig’s stripping down and/or transformation into Tommy, is sung clearly in Tommy’s voice. I love how much this show plays with gender boundaries and how nebulous the whole ending is because it allows everyone to come to their own conclusions at the end. There are also people who think Hedwig is fictitious, and that it’s Tommy the whole time, and that the whole German persona is a way for Tommy to deal with some emotional issues. This is actually closer to the story of its creator, John Cameron Mitchell, whose childhood mirrors Tommy’s and who indeed created Hedwig as a means of expression, as all art is. It’s such a compelling story no matter what your interpretation of the whole thing is. The most important part, regardless of which interpretation you form, is that the ending has Hedwig, or Tommy, or both, finally accepting who he/she is and finding inner peace.
All of this analysis is as fascinating as it is because Stephen Trask wrote the most magnificent music to tell this story. Before I saw this revival, I only knew “Wig In A Box”, but I’m now obsessed with the entire score, which has become one of my favorites. Every song captures so much emotion in a different way. Also, it seems like there’s really no supporting cast, because it’s just Hedwig up there with her band, but Yitzhak is a crucial role. I didn’t appreciate Lena Hall’s performance much the first time. I thought, okay, she has an amazing voice and talks like a man pretty convincingly, but a Tony? But on second viewing, I was stunned. Her interplay with Hedwig is everything. Every look that passes between them, all the times she (well he, Yitzhak, but easier to say she because Lena) jumps up to help Hedwig and all the times she purposefully pisses him off. Hedwig’s treatment of Yitzhak is despicable, not only because she’s always saying how Tommy was her soulmate, in front of her husband! So the ending, when Hedwig lets Yitzhak get back in drag and shine as perhaps an even stronger performer than Hedwig, is as much about Yitzhak’s journey and growth as about Hedwig’s.
And a hugely enjoyable part of the show is how much can change depending on the lead actor’s interpretation. NPH was funny, so charming, and often sad. His Hedwig seemed wistful more than stuck. He was also really pretty as a woman! He was at least believable as a ‘slip of a girly boy’. And his jokes were hysterical, especially my favorite “what’s an eight track” line in “Wig”. His energy was unbounded, his “Sugar Daddy” was insanely fun and unparalleled, and his “Origin of Love” was also beautiful. While NPH’s Hedwig seemed a downcast victim of ill fortune, Michael C. Hall’s was graver, darker, with more edge to his jokes and his singing. MCH’s much more masculine physical appearance made a difference as well, as his butch and kind of garish Hedwig made it more obvious that the path Hedwig’s life took – becoming a woman, a wife, an ex-wife, leaving home – was not exactly the product of free will. His “Midnight Radio” was incredibly powerful and his “Wicked Little Town” so wrenching and lovely. Both performances are worthy of acclaim (and were given it), but Michael’s deeper misery made a huge impact on me and showed how many layers there are to this seemingly simple story. I’m insanely jealous of the people who have seen all of the actors in this revival, especially John Cameron Mitchell, who should be back next week (but will finish before I’m back in NYC. Time to learn that lesson.). If you have the chance this week to see Michael, it’s definitely worth it. And if you have the chance to see John Cameron Mitchell, then I hate you.
And I am definitely one of those new fans. I watched the movie version of “Hedwig” in college but wasn’t really paying attention so I didn’t get it and didn’t even realize what amazingness I was watching. But then Neil Patrick Harris brought Hedwig back to life last spring and it won lots of Tonys and it was the hardest ticket to get. Since I like to see everything every season, this was very difficult for me to accept. Luckily I did not have to learn a lesson in not getting everything I want, Broadway edition, because my super awesome friend at Ever the Wayfarer got me ungettable tickets to NPH’s final weekend! Best ever! It was his beautiful performance that made me an obsessive fan of all things Hedwig.
“Hedwig & The Angry Inch” tells the story of a young man named Hansel, a ‘slip of a girly boy’ living with his austere mother in East Berlin before the wall came down. NB, that was the really shitty side. Hansel met Luther, an American soldier, who lured him with lots of candy like he was driving a white van, and made Hansel an offer he couldn’t refuse: to marry him, and thus get out of East Berlin. Obviously, this was happening before gay marriage was allowed anywhere, even in Europe, and so Hansel would have to undergo a sex change operation to pass the physical examination. Hansel’s mother gives him her passport and tells him he can go by her name, Hedwig. And so the new Hedwig goes to surgery, and as you probably can guess from the title, it is botched, to say the least, and he’s “left with a one-inch mound of flesh where my penis used to be, where my vagina never was. It was a one-inch mound of flesh, with a scar running down it like a sideways grimace on an eyeless face.” I freaking love that line and had to share.
So he, now she, Hedwig, is moved to Junction City, Kansas to live with her new husband Luther, who soon leaves her alone, living in a motor home, working a checkout counter, left to watch the fall of the Berlin wall on television too soon after all she went through to escape.
It’s pretty damn depressing. But it gets better like they all say! Because here she is, for her ‘one night only’ Broadway performance (as the show is billed as), made possible by the previous night’s mid-show closing of the first performance of the fictitious “Hurt Locker: The Musical”. To play up this backstory, fake “Hurt Locker” playbills are strewn about the auditorium before every performance, so if you are lucky enough to find one, you should frame it. These fake playbills are HILARIOUS, from the list of songs in the fake musical (including gems like “Won’t you buy my porn DVD” and “Hot Desert Nights!”) to the castlist (including Bobby Cannavale, Taye Diggs, and D’Bree Dazeem (Adele’s sister)) to the standard Playbill “How many have you seen” section all full of made-up and hysterical shows (including “Streep No More”, “SoulCycle On Broadway”, and, my favorite, “Tyler Perry is Madea is Medea”). Whoever made this fake playbill deserved a huge raise if not his or her own Tony. I still can’t get over how incredible it is.
Anyway, Hedwig is here in her one-night only concert, using the Hurt Locker set (a blown up car, lots of pipes and dinginess) and singing her glorious songs for a huge NYC crowd while telling us the rest of her history. After Luther left her, she started babysitting for a kid named Tommy, and together they wrote unbelievable music as they fell in love, a love that has both sustained and plagued Hedwig since. See, as a young boy, Hedwig was enamored with the story of the Origin of Love, based on Aristophanes’ speech in Plato’s Symposium, which tells how humans used to be of three sexes in forms about double what we are now. When the gods got angry and scared of our strength, they split everyone into two, making us the size and shape we are now while simultaneously creating the idea of our ‘other halves’, our soulmates. This is considered the origin of love, as the two people, the two parts, form one whole, and the search for that other half is what will make you complete. It’s really a lovely story, and the performance of this song is my favorite part of the whole show, with superb simple animation projected on a screen.
But Hedwig takes this story a little too seriously, and has been searching for her other half her whole life. She believed she found it in Tommy, but he was reviled by her situation downstairs, and things fell apart. To add insult to injury, Tommy became a famous rock star stealing all the songs they wrote together, which crushed Hedwig. Despite Hedwig’s now marriage to one of her musicians, a male Jewish drag queen named Yitzhak (played to perfection by Lena Hall), and all the time that has passed, she is still heartbroken yearning for Tommy. In addition to Hedwig’s words, the show itself demonstrates her feelings for Tommy, as it begins with the highest energy, like a rock concert. It’s loud and energetic and totally awesome, with “Tear Me Down” and “Sugar Daddy”. But once we hear Hedwig’s anthem, “Wig In A Box”, the dynamic changes and the songs become more personal, more sensitive, more sad.
The fantastic, clever, and intriguing aspect of the story is the ambiguity of the relationship between the characters of Tommy and Hedwig. The set up is that Tommy, a huge rock star, is playing an enormous venue just behind the Belasco, where Hedwig is singing. The venues share a door that repeatedly gets opened by Hedwig or Yitzhak during the show, when we can hear Tommy’s Midwestern voice addressing his adoring fans. Because the actor playing Hedwig also plays Tommy, some people think they are the same person, and that Hedwig’s struggle that she’s been telling us about has really just been within herself. While the latter is definitely true, it seems more widely accepted that they are indeed two different people, but that they are so similar in many ways that they both need to go through this journey, and rather than becoming complete by joining together, they become complete by, in Hedwig’s case, letting the other go and, in Tommy’s case, recognizing how much their relationship meant to him and apologizing for the past. I love how the “Wicked Little Town Reprise”, after Hedwig’s stripping down and/or transformation into Tommy, is sung clearly in Tommy’s voice. I love how much this show plays with gender boundaries and how nebulous the whole ending is because it allows everyone to come to their own conclusions at the end. There are also people who think Hedwig is fictitious, and that it’s Tommy the whole time, and that the whole German persona is a way for Tommy to deal with some emotional issues. This is actually closer to the story of its creator, John Cameron Mitchell, whose childhood mirrors Tommy’s and who indeed created Hedwig as a means of expression, as all art is. It’s such a compelling story no matter what your interpretation of the whole thing is. The most important part, regardless of which interpretation you form, is that the ending has Hedwig, or Tommy, or both, finally accepting who he/she is and finding inner peace.
All of this analysis is as fascinating as it is because Stephen Trask wrote the most magnificent music to tell this story. Before I saw this revival, I only knew “Wig In A Box”, but I’m now obsessed with the entire score, which has become one of my favorites. Every song captures so much emotion in a different way. Also, it seems like there’s really no supporting cast, because it’s just Hedwig up there with her band, but Yitzhak is a crucial role. I didn’t appreciate Lena Hall’s performance much the first time. I thought, okay, she has an amazing voice and talks like a man pretty convincingly, but a Tony? But on second viewing, I was stunned. Her interplay with Hedwig is everything. Every look that passes between them, all the times she (well he, Yitzhak, but easier to say she because Lena) jumps up to help Hedwig and all the times she purposefully pisses him off. Hedwig’s treatment of Yitzhak is despicable, not only because she’s always saying how Tommy was her soulmate, in front of her husband! So the ending, when Hedwig lets Yitzhak get back in drag and shine as perhaps an even stronger performer than Hedwig, is as much about Yitzhak’s journey and growth as about Hedwig’s.
And a hugely enjoyable part of the show is how much can change depending on the lead actor’s interpretation. NPH was funny, so charming, and often sad. His Hedwig seemed wistful more than stuck. He was also really pretty as a woman! He was at least believable as a ‘slip of a girly boy’. And his jokes were hysterical, especially my favorite “what’s an eight track” line in “Wig”. His energy was unbounded, his “Sugar Daddy” was insanely fun and unparalleled, and his “Origin of Love” was also beautiful. While NPH’s Hedwig seemed a downcast victim of ill fortune, Michael C. Hall’s was graver, darker, with more edge to his jokes and his singing. MCH’s much more masculine physical appearance made a difference as well, as his butch and kind of garish Hedwig made it more obvious that the path Hedwig’s life took – becoming a woman, a wife, an ex-wife, leaving home – was not exactly the product of free will. His “Midnight Radio” was incredibly powerful and his “Wicked Little Town” so wrenching and lovely. Both performances are worthy of acclaim (and were given it), but Michael’s deeper misery made a huge impact on me and showed how many layers there are to this seemingly simple story. I’m insanely jealous of the people who have seen all of the actors in this revival, especially John Cameron Mitchell, who should be back next week (but will finish before I’m back in NYC. Time to learn that lesson.). If you have the chance this week to see Michael, it’s definitely worth it. And if you have the chance to see John Cameron Mitchell, then I hate you.
