Sex, Wigs, and Rock ‘n Roll: Comparing Sexuality in Hedwig and the Angry Inch Original Cast Recording [1998] and Hedwig and the Angry Inch Original Broadway Cast Recording[2014]

29 Apr

In 1998, Hedwig and the Angry Inch opened Off-Broadway and introduced a new kind of show to the world. This show featured queer characters and sexuality in a bold, unapologetic way, challenging many norms and ideas at the time of what should be seen on stage. The show never made it Broadway back in the late nineties but reopened in 2014 as a revival. While the majority of the show did not see major changes, there were musical changes made in the revival that impact how the sexuality of the show and its title character, Hedwig, are perceived.

Before getting further into what these changes are and how they impact the show’s sexuality, let’s cover the plot of the show to provide context for my discussion.

The show plays like a small concert, with Hedwig telling the audience this story of her life as they play songs throughout her set.

This image shows the 1998 original cast performing Hedwig and the Angry Inch

Hedwig is a genderqueer transwoman from East Berlin who was the victim of a botched vaginoplasty. Raised in East Berlin by her mother, Hedwig was a “girly slip of a boy” who found love with a US soldier, Luther, for whom she began dressing in women’s clothing and eventually decided to transition to being a woman so that she could marry him and escape East Berlin, a story in the song “Sugar Daddy”. But Hedwig’s surgery “got botched” as she explains in the song “Angry Inch”

“Two days later, the hole closed up, the wound healed

And I was 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

It was just a little bulge

It was an angry inch”

A year after they moved to the US together, Luther leaves her for a man and the Berlin wall falls, leaving Hedwig to mourn the sacrifices she made that she didn’t have to. But she comes away resolved and finds her identity as she puts on her iconic wig. Following this, Hedwig lives in  a trailer home in Junction City Kansas, where she begins babysitting for a family with an 18 year old son, Tommy. Tommy and Hedwig fall in love and create music together, planning to become rock stars together. Hedwig gives Tommy his stage name, Tommy Gnosis, and they finally kiss. However, Tommy finds out about Hedwig’s botched surgery and leaves her, running off and becoming a rock star playing the music he stole from Hedwig and leaving her behind.  During the show, Tommy Gnosis is playing a stadium next door, which Hedwig references during the show.

The audience meets Hedwig after all this, where she is performing with her band “the Angry Inch”, that includes her husband Yitzhak, as Jewish immigrant and drag queen whom Hedwig discovered and took with her on the condition that he could never where a wig again, scared of being upstaged by him. Hedwig also holds Yitzhak’s passport, which he needs as an immigrant, giving Hedwig significant power over Yitzhak.

With that being said, here is a little more context for the creative environment Hedwig was created in, which influences it’s sound and how we read its sexuality and themes.

In 1994, John Cameron Mitchell and Stephen Trask debuted the character of Hedwig at a drag night in a Queer rock bar in New York called the Squeezebox. With John Cameron Mitchel playing the role in drag, Hedwig is a queer punk rocker who transcends the binary of man and woman in a world that refuses her mainstream success, mirroring the struggler of queer musicians in that time period during the rise of Queercore music. Queercore is a subsect of the punk scene for queer musicians who were not excepted by the broader punk community or society. This scene also embodied different kinds of gender presentation outside of normative roles and appearances. It is unsurprising, then, that Hedwig was created within this space of creativity by two queer men in that scene during the 90s.

In this interview, composer Stephen Trask discusses this from 3:15-6:10. In this video he also plays several songs and addresses other themes of Hedwig and the creative process of writing the music.

Given this background, it is interesting to see the rock style of the album has changed from the 1998 version to the 2014 version. With Queercore still being the base for the musical sound but not the only sound, seeing the shift towards more bass, less piano, and bolder, clearer sounds, builds on that legacy and also pushes the sound in a slightly different way that still has its roots while providing a cleaner sound. All of this impacts the sexuality of both the show and the main character, Hedwig.

While there are a few big differences in the new recording (“Sugar Daddy”’s rock revival, the addition of “When Love Explodes”, and the change of “Long Grift” being performed by Yitzhak instead of Hedwig), there are also several smaller changes in the arrangements that focus different instruments in the 2014 recording that impact how we read Hedwig and the tone of the show.

One of the major changes in this recording is the movement away from the keyboard and the movement towards the bass. In four songs (“Tear me Down”, “Origin of Love”, “Wicked Little Town (Reprise)”, and “The Long Grift”) there is a clear refocus on the emphasis of the electric bass in the music. One clear example is in “Wicked Little Town (Reprise)”. In this song, the actor who plays Hedwig takes on the character of Tommy Gnosis singing to Hedwig, already bringing in a new level of intimacy and sexuality as the song deals with their sexual and romantic connection. The 1998 version of this song clearly features keys as the dominant sound within this song. The keys bring out a pop rock/glam rock feel that do not give the song as mature of a sound. The song feels lighter in some ways because of this and more disconnected emotionally.

Here the 1998 version. Feel free to listen to the whole song or focus on :38 to 1:15 for a direct comparison to the 2014 version.

But in the 2014 version, the electric bass is centered, which gives the music a cleaner, deeper sound and allows the vocals to come through more clearly and with less competition in the upper ranges of notes, therefore. This creates a more punk or rock sound than the keys did. The strong bass lines leave a more intense feel to the song and this increase in intensity also deepens the intimacy of the song given the nature of who is singing it and to whom. This focus on the foundational sounds of bass and drums rather than more additive sounds such as the keys gives this song an intensity and rawness that is not as clear in the other version. Vulnerability is a big part of sexuality and the 2014 version moves the performer more centered vocally with the bass as the major backing sound, which focuses the vulnerability and intimacy of the number.

Here is the 2014 version. Compare from around :38 to 1:15.

There are several places this can be seen throughout the recordings (see the songs listed above), but this more subtle change was not the only change made in the 2014 revival of Hedwig.

One of the major changes in the revival of this show is how the song “Sugar Daddy” sounds and is performed. “Sugar Daddy” is one of the earlier numbers in the show that details how Hedwig met Luther as a young man in Germany. In the original version of the show, this song is played in a country style with an acoustic guitar playing the main melody and a tambourine as the main percussion. The plucky guitar riff that starts the song and continues throughout the number, providing a more gentle, warm, blue-grass sound not heard in any other numbers in the show. This tone sets up the scene to be innocent and playful, which Hedwig leans into throughout this recording and especially in this song. John Cameron Mitchell sings in a more aloof tone, letting his honeyed, folky tenor carry the tone of the song along with the acoustic, folksy style. This sound combined with a number of the sexual innuendos throughout the song creates a humorous tone for the scene, giving the audience a more lighthearted interpretation of this story from Hedwig’s youth.

Here audio of John Cameron Mitchell as Hedwig performing this song in the 1998 off-Broadway production.

In relation to gender, this playful tone and soft “honeyed” sound allows the audience to see Hedwig almost as a young, innocent girl here. There is a gentle femininity in the sound from the softness of Mitchell’s voice and the folksy singing that comes through along with the high but distinct timbre of the acoustic guitar. Together, this invokes the soft, playful femininity that gives this scene a flirtatious reading. This lean into “flirty, young, feminine” is emphasized also by the decrescendos on certain lines of the song (such as the pre-chorus), where the band and Hedwig start the line at more of a mezzo forte and ends more in a mezzo piano/piano volume with the instruments stopping so that the last word of the verse is the only thing heard. This is then followed by a return to forte and another decrescendo to mezzo piano until the main chorus hits. This dynamic shift also feeds into the flirty, feminine tone of the song by contrasting the louder parts of the song with this quick decrescendos to give Hedwig more focus while maintaining the soft, folksy vocal tone. Overall, the 1998 version of this song uses acoustic sounds, a lighter honeyed voice, and a playful tone to create a humorous, flirtatious number with a less mature tone, speaking to the characterization of Hedwig in this moment as an innocent young feminine person.

In the 2014 revival, this song is completely reimagined into one of the most rock ‘n roll songs of the show. One of the first major changes is the acoustic guitar to electric guitar and the introduction of strong bass lines and loud drums and cymbals. This hard rock sound is a harsh contrast to its old folksy blue-grass version. Another major change is the strong, full, perfectly smooth timbre of Neil Patrick Harris’s voice, which provides a different kind of rock star feel in this song than John Cameron Mitchell’s softer, warm, breathy timbre. While Mitchell tends to be loose with enunciating his words, creating more of a flowing breathy tune, Harris’s notes ring out clearly and succinctly as he enunciates every word with a pop. His voice is more powerful and more forceful than Mitchell’s, which matches with the hard rock sound of the band.

Watch Neil Patrick Harris’s 2014 Tony’s performance of “Sugar Daddy”.

These musical changes have a full effect on this scene through the lens of gender. While the country rendition of this song left the sexual nature of it more flirty and playful, the contrasting hard rock sound of this version gives a more sexual, mature tone that changes our characterization of a young Hedwig. Rather than an aloof, playful tease, Hedwig reads as a more mature and sexually liberated person. The same kind of femininity is not evoked here, but I do not think that dismisses the song from being feminine. Rather, the song takes on more of a Riot Grrrl, provocative vibe. This is still very much in the character of Hedwig, who discusses provocative things throughout the show. However, it paints a more sexual tone with the intense chords and drums that the original version is lacking. Generally, this song sexualizes Hedwig more than before and also removes some of the innocence from the song as well with the more mature, bold sound.

In wrapping up, I want to acknowledge that there are other notable changes in the music from 1998 to 2014 that I do not have the space to write about nor the proper lens. My focus on the increased focus on the bass and a punk and rock sound and the decreased use of keys was to display changes in sexuality of the characters and the show. In making these changes, Hedwig reads as more overtly sexual rather than more flirtatious in the 2014 recording.

Sources:
Gordon, David. “Meet the Band Members of The Angry Inch!” TheaterMania, 1 Nov. 2013, www.theatermania.com/broadway/news/meet-the-band-members-of-the-angry-inch_66513.html.
Hogdson, Peter. “The Art Of Punk Bass.” Gibson Guitar, 26 May 2014, es.gibson.com/News-Lifestyle/Features/en-us/The-Art-Of-Punk-Bass.aspx.
Miller, Stuart. “Hedwig Creators Break Down How They Changed the Script for Broadway.” Vulture, Vulture, 11 June 2014, www.vulture.com/2014/06/hedwig-and-the-angry-inch-script-changes-story.html.
Nault, Curran Jacob. Queer as punk: Queercore and the production of an anti-normative media subculture. Diss. 2013.
Newmark, Judith. “How ‘Hedwig and the Angry Inch’ Changed Musical Theater.” STLtoday.com, 4 May 2017, www.stltoday.com/entertainment/arts-and-theatre/how-hedwig-and-the-angry-inch-changed-musical-theater/article_65ae07d3-c879-5639-a9d8-c3eb2a5d68d8.html.
Rimalower, Ben. “10 Broadway Tenors Who Rock.” Playbill, PLAYBILL INC., 14 Feb. 2015, www.playbill.com/article/10-broadway-tenors-who-rock-com-341605.