The Jaeb Theater of the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center may just be too friendly a space for John Cameron Mitchell's Hedwig and the Angry Inch. This highly stylized musical, which first appeared at a rock and roll drag bar in New York City, would feel more appropriate in a cellar smelling of stale beer and cigarette smoke, and featuring patrons of uncertain gender crowded in upon and cruising one another.
The Jaeb, with its wide stage and its politely separated tables, is too civilized, too genteel for this story of sex-change gone wrong, set to defiant electric guitars and dominated by a haughty drag queen who occasionally descends into the audience to mock and menace. A life-affirming adaptation of a Charles Dickens short story? A loving tribute to Louis Armstrong? Sure, the Jaeb is just right for these and other well-meaning entertainments. But this capacious, airy theater attenuates what should be the claustrophobia of the Hedwig experience, leaving us not quite convinced, uncomfortably aware of an essential contradiction. After all, this is a play that wants not just bright lights but dark shadows, complicity, more than a hint of decadence. That's not quite what we feel in the decorous, commodious Jaeb.
And that's too bad because Hedwig is mostly about style — both its lead character's and its band's. There's a story here also, though it's not very deep. Hedwig, we learn (through narration interspersed with songs — don't expect much dramatizing), started her life as a boy named Hansel in East Berlin. Eventually, she encountered an American serviceman who told her that if she'd have a sex-change operation, he'd marry her and take her to the U.S. She had the operation, but it was mismanaged, leaving her with a one-inch mound of flesh between her legs, neither penis nor vagina.
She did get to Kansas, though, was divorced, took odd jobs ("mostly blow," she says), and started a rock band called The Angry Inch. Eventually she met a general's son, Tommy Speck, and decided that he was her missing half. She gave him the name Tommy Gnosis (Greek for "knowledge," she explains), but he walked out on her when he discovered nothing between her thighs. He went on to rock and roll fame, while she — well, here she is, at our local theater, telling us her life story, and singing with The Angry Inch.
It's an original enough tale on the surface, though in truth it finally doesn't add up to much. Still, Hedwig seems to want to be about style, not substance. Most of all it's about David Karl Lee's performance in the title role. Prowling around the stage in a red, white and blue outfit and blond wig, Lee plays Hedwig as vain, self-pitying, tough and boastful ("When it comes to huge openings, many people think of me"). Toughness is most important: Even when we're supposed to believe Hedwig is overwhelmed by her feelings, Lee communicates how thick-skinned she is, how little credence we should give to her apparent emotion.
Lee's descents into the audience betray a similar untouchability: Hedwig judges us, Hedwig disdains us, Hedwig is the star and we're just nameless fans. A milder presence is Hedwig's sidekick Yitzak, played by Becky Fisher. Yitzak, when he's not singing, is mostly a silent partner, deferential to and amused by Hedwig, but not above commenting on a song, "That fucking sucked."
Finally, there's the onstage band The Angry Inch (Samuel Fredricks, Gerard Kouwenhoven, Nathan Shifflett, Amy Mullins and Jeff Barnes). The Inch is a loud rock band with attitude, and once again would probably have more of an impact in a space smaller than the Jaeb. There's nothing terribly innovative about their music — Hedwig is always more interesting than her stage-mates — but their 10 songs (written by Stephen Trask) have genuine power, and on occasion are truly memorable.
One of director Kenny Howard's nicest strategies is to convince us that the band members — and Yitzak too — would turn out to be fascinating, if only we could know them. Of course, that's not possible with Hedwig at the helm; she only relinquishes center stage when she needs to make a costume change. But the suggestion that everyone on stage has a story to tell is one of the strengths of the production.
Still, I can't join in the loud applause Hedwig has received in some of its earlier incarnations ("Sublimely trashy and surprisingly powerful!" says the L.A. Times). Finally, I need a little more substance in my entertainment, something more to ponder than what double entendre salacious Hedwig will come up with next. I might have a different reaction if Hedwig had something new to say about transsexuals, transvestites, straights or gays, rock or pop. But even the play's most original idea — the neither-male-nor-female "angry inch" — seems largely forgotten soon after it's announced. What remains is manner without matter, a way of seeing but nothing much seen.
If surface style is enough for you — if the music is enough for you — you might want to buy a ticket to Hedwig.
But don't look too deeply; beneath this tale of bent genders and botched operations lurks … not very much.
Not very much at all.
Free Concert The Florida Orchestra, under the baton of new Associate Conductor Susan Haig, is offering two free concerts this weekend. On Friday, Oct. 24, the Orchestra will be at Tampa's Plant Park, and on Saturday the 25th at St. Petersburg's Vinoy Park. Show time for both dates is 7 p.m. On the program are Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture and Slavic March, Jutras highlights from the 1970s, and Shostakovich's Festive Overture. Bring friends, family and picnic basket. You know the rest.
Performance Critic Mark E. Leib can be reached at mark.leib@weeklyplanet.com or 813-248-8888 ext. 305.
This article appears in Oct 23-28, 2003.