He just had to play `Hedwig'
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Theater preview
"Hedwig and the Angry Inch" opens tonight at the Re-bar, 1114 Howell, Seattle, and plays Thursday-Sunday through Feb. 11. $16. 206-323-0388.
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Nick Garrison was sitting in New York's Jane Street Theatre one evening when he had one of those goose-bump moments actors live for.
"I just knew that this was something I had to do, a role I had to play," recalled Garrison.
The Off Broadway musical he was watching? "Hedwig and the Angry Inch." The role he coveted? Hedwig Schmidt, a blowsy East German rock singer suffering from a botched sex-change operation, a broken heart and a career spiral.
The transvestite heroine of the inventive John Cameron Mitchell-Steven Trask rock musical is a battered Teutonic soul who is by turns pitiful, defiant, yearning and jaded - but always outrageous.
For the guy playing Hedwig, the show offers a chance to belt out rock tunes, shuttle between spike-heel comedy and abject vulnerability, and sashay around in fishnet stockings, a hussy-blond wig, and trash-glam outfits.
And tonight, on his 27th birthday, Garrison gets his wish: He opens in the Seattle premiere of "Hedwig and the Angry Inch" at the Re-bar, backed up by a band of ace Seattle rockers including former Sky Cries Mary drummer Ben Ireland and Jim Nelson (of The Nobs).
It won't be the first time Garrison has donned lipstick and pumps at the Re-bar. That's where the Seattle-bred, Northwest School graduate and versatile fringe theater veteran debuted his clever original show about another mythical pop diva, Randee Sparks.
"Randee was one of those annoying, grating, Liza Minnelli or Barbra Streisand-type vocalists, whom you both love and want to kill," noted the elfin-looking actor, unassuming in jeans and a sweatshirt.
Garrison also recently played "a '20s chanteuse in Trinidad" in an Off Broadway revival of the scandalous old Mae West play, "Sex."
But Hedwig, he points out, is cut from a different cloth than any of those other gals. Spandex, maybe.
Mused Garrison, "This is a real rock show, which is great. The music lets me get into more of a Patti Smith, Janis Joplin groove. But it also has this Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht sort of feel. It's got a German cabaret sensibility crossed with rock 'n' roll."
That inspired blending helped make "Hedwig" a sleeper hit in New York when it premiered in 1998, with author-actor Mitchell coming on strong as Hedwig.
Structured as a mock-rock concert, the show grants ample time to Trask's hard-edged songs, and to Hedwig's moody ruminations on her ultra-weird life and tempestuous relationship with a (male) rock star - who plays stadiums, while she's stuck in divey rock clubs.
"Hedwig" ran two years in New York - and might have lasted even longer, if not for a much-publicized flap between its producers and actress Ally Sheedy, who was fired after taking over the lead role.
Runs of "Hedwig" have also done well in Los Angeles, Boston and other cities, and it recently opened a stand in London. The original cast recording also won praise. And Mitchell just reprised his performance for a film of "Hedwig," slated for release in 2001.
Though Garrison is delighted to introduce Hedwig to Seattle, he no longer resides here but in New York, where he's found stage, film and voice-over work. Another project: "Kiss the Bride," a new film being developed by director Bob Balaban with a cast that includes Philip Seymour Hoffman and Lisa Kudrow, as well as Garrison.
But the latter says he's firmly committed to staying here in "Hedwig" until mid-February, and probably into the spring - if the show clicks with Seattle audiences and gets extended.
"I think it has a wide appeal and could really make it here," Garrison suggests. "In a way, seeing it at a little hole-in-the-wall like the Re-bar is better than watching it in a great big theater.
"It should appeal to a mixed crowd, like it did in New York, because it's not really a gay show or a drag show. But no matter what, it's got to rock."