OUT100
THE PEOPLE WHO ROCKED 1998
January 1999
JOHN CAMERON MITCHELL|ROCK AND ROLE
She struts on stage in '80's boots and a '70's hairdo and strips off her cape, scribbled with political graffiti, to reveal the glory of vinyl and flesh beneath. She's a punky patchwork of history's detritus with a song to sing, a story to tell. "Hedwig really is this creature that has come out of the ooze of the century," says John Cameron Mitchell of the fab fin de siècle creation at the center of his rock musical Hedwig and the Angry Inch, an unlikely 1998 off-Broadway hit. (When was the last time you heard a rock tune based on teh origins-of-love myth from Plato's Symposium?) Hedwig, to be produced internationally in '99, follows the life of an East German survivor of a botched sex change whose inner world crumbles around the same time the Berlin Wall does. The tragic heroine, though, is redeemed by her wisdom and wit. Just take her quip on the inevitablilty of prostitution: "I lost my job at the base P.X. And I lost my gag reflex. You do the math." How did Mitchell, a 35-year old single Manhattanite who appeared in Broadway's Six Degrees of Separation and The Secret Garden, explain the success of such trashy, transcendent theatre? "It's totally queer, but it's very inclusive. Hedwig's central situation is something we can all relate to: trying to figure out what it means to fill up a hole after having had something ripped away--and what do you do with the inch you've been given? A lot of unexpected people really respond to it, especially middle-aged women." Rock On.--Robert Hilferty
Photo: Alexis Rodriguez-Duarte Grooming: Tico Torres
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