Just when you thought musicals were safe (maybe too safe) for most anyone, Hedwig and the Angry Inch tore through peaceful waters, leaving a red bubbling mess in its wake. A great white shark to Rent's sickly guppie, Hedwig took on the hallowed halls of American musical luminaries with punk-like abandon. While still playing within the time-tested structures of the musical, co-creators John Cameron Mitchell (text and the role of Hedwig) and Stephen Trask (music and lyrics, and Angry Inch band leader Skszp) crafted an intelligent, witty and rocking musical about an East German transexual glam rocker who rises to semi-prominence from a Kansas trailer park. |

But chances are you know all that. Hedwig debuted just over one year ago, and the unlikely off-Broadway heroine has garnered reams of press. Now she's set to enter new waters. But rather than reel off a synergistic exploitation of their production, Trask and Mitchell are instead creating a smart, mini-Hedwig enterprise. After all, it's not every day that one finds a back door to success, and these two aren't about to let opportunity transform into novelty. With the recent release of an out-and-out rock & roll Hedwig concept album and with the ink drying on a reported million-dollar film deal with New Line, Trask and Mitchell have found themselves in a veritable wading pool full of swimmers, as the whole shebang moves from New York City's West Village to a bigger -- and more nebulous -- national stage.

"Every day there's just a new Hedwig thing," Trask says of his fast-expanding opportunities. "It's so hard to find time to actually sit down and work. I need to decompress."

Despite said lack of time, Trask quickly warms to talking shop. The new album, on Atlantic, is a wig of a different color -- a cast recording that was recorded in the studio, with a road-tested rock producer. "Most cast albums are recorded live in one day. Which is a ridiculous way of recording," Trask explains. "They don't record musicals the way that people are used to hearing the music. So they're usually for fans only. I honestly don't know much about musicals, but from what I've seen, people that are proteges of Stephen Sondheim tend to write anti-songs, very purposefully not engaging you with a melodic or lyrical hook. The songs seem to unfold in a kind of endless meander. And the idea of taking that and trying to achieve rock music through it -- what would even possess someone to do such a thing?"

The solution? Trask and Mitchell enlisted Brad Wood, a producer with indie-cred (Smashing Pumpkins, Liz Phair, Placebo) to tweak the knobs on their decidedly anti-Sondheim project. The result is the first significant step Trask and Mitchell took in moving beyond the initial Hedwig production. "We sought Brad out, and what a find," Trask says. "He's worked in so many styles, and intellectually he got it. And he had a really wonderful disposition and approach to getting performances out of people. I don't think John had ever really thought about making an album like this. Cheater [Trask's band; a k a the Angry Inch] had, though. This is what we had been aiming for. So we were coming from different places, and he was able to adapt from where John was coming from, as well as where we were coming from, and get the best out of us."

With the album complete, Trask and Mitchell will continue to work together on the Hedwig film (which Mitchell will script, star in and possibly direct), as well as an HBO short film unrelated to the Hedwig enterprise. But, ultimately, their paths may diverge. Both men seem eager to take a breather and reassess their goals. Hedwig and the Angry Inch has opened up a Pandora's Box of options for them, but they don't wish to be upstaged, or worse, defined by their brainchild.

Trask, who has slugged it out on the New York club scene for years fronting Cheater, seems to relish the notion of taking the show on the road in proper rock & roll fashion. According to Atlantic, a non-theatrical "Hedwig and the Angry Inch" tour is tentatively scheduled for April and May. "I hear they're trying to get us to open for the Rolling Stones, but I don't know how that one's going," Trask says, then laughs. "I hear [the Stones] have a really chintzy backstage. Unless you're in their circle where you get to eat expensive cuts of meat, it's apparently wine-dyed cheese spread still in the package and an open box of crackers."

In lieu of becoming a road warrior, Mitchell is diverting his attention to bringing Hedwig to the big screen. Rather than reproducing the musical, Mitchell plans to expand its vision "Nashville style" (the film, not the city), following Hedwig around on tour and developing the story of her mega-star protege Tommy Gnosis while filling in the details of her almost parallel rise to second-rate star. After the Hedwig film wraps, he hopes to take a break from acting for a while next year, write another film and then return to the stage to direct someone else's work.

Mitchell, a man of the theater, sounds a bit weary of the glam-rocking lifestyle. "I always had rock star fantasies, but they were fully sated by this," he says. "I won't say that at some other time I wouldn't do an album, but I don't think I really want to tour. I'm getting too old for that. I haven't been able to write because of all of the promotion. So I don't need to be going away on tour. But the thing is that they have all these Hedwigs available. And there's plenty of other people who can actually sing better than I can."

To wit, at a record release party for Hedwig Wednesday, Feb. 17 at Manhattan's Bowery Ballroom, Mitchell was joined onstage for the set-closing "Midnight Radio" by Michael Cerveris, who will be taking over the lead role in the stage production. And as well as Mitchell has been served by his strange creation, he seemed more than content to share his angry inch.

ANDREW DANSBY(February 18, 1999)