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Photo By Matt Borgerding
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The Angry Inch: (crouching) Philip Solomon and
(standing, L-R): Michael Horrigan, Andrew Smithson,
John Curley, Billy Alletzhauser and Sam Womelsdorf
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Fantasize for a moment about the most kick-ass Rock band you might assemble from Cincinnati's best performers. You might pick someone from the Afghan Whigs or the Ass Ponys. How about Ruby Vileos, Len's Lounge, Throneberry or Culture Queer?
No need to fantasize this summer, because a real supergroup
is being assembled. They'll be known as The Angry Inch. (See
Review of Hedwig and the Angry Inch.)
Although they might be the best fantasy band since Spinal Tap, the Inch could well become the summer's hottest concert ticket. The club where they'll appear isn't where music fans typically go, but if you drop by Ensemble Theatre of Cincinnati (ETC) during June, you'll catch them: Billy Alletzhauser (guitar) of the Ass Ponys and Ruby Vileos; Michael Horrigan (bass), now with Len's Lounge, formerly drummer with the Afghan Whigs and Throneberry; and Sam Womelsdorf (guitar), now of Culture Queer, who used to play with Throneberry.
Philip Solomon, once a member of the legendary Impotent Sea Snakes and now an actor/musician and performance artist, is coming to Cincinnati to bang away on the drums and serve as the Angry Inch's maestro. Another former Afghan Whig, John Curley, will engineer the sound. Rounding out the Inch is Andrew Smithson (keyboards), from the Showboat Majestic and CCM's Hot Summer Nights.
What's bringing all these players together? It's the chance to back up Hedwig. And who, you might ask, is Hedwig? The simple answer is Todd Almond, a 1999 CCM grad now working in New York as an actor, cabaret singer and composer. But Hedwig's more than a role.
Written by John Cameron Mitchell with music and lyrics by Stephen Trask, Hedwig and the Angry Inch was an acclaimed off-Broadway show that opened in 1998, with Mitchell in the title role that evolved from a 1994 female-impersonator revue in Greenwich Village. Mitchell expanded his character into a true diva, writing a back-story full of double-entendre and jokes about the music business.
The show was an instant hit: Rolling Stone said, "In the whole long, sorry history of rock musicals, Hedwig and the Angry Inch is the first one that truly rocks."
Hedwig will be in the national news again this summer because Mitchell has turned his performance into a feature film distributed by New Line Cinema. It got great buzz at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year and is highly anticipated by art film houses.
Since the show closed in New York earlier this year, there have been only a few productions -- with ETC's one of just five in the works around the country. Since ETC Artistic Director D. Lynn Meyers decided last fall to plug in Hedwig after the close of her 2000-2001 season, Almond was her choice to play the German Rock goddess who's the victim of a gruesomely botched sex change operation, leaving an "angry inch" of scar tissue.
Almond got local theatergoers' attention as angst-ridden Louis in CCM's 1998-99 productions of Tony Kushner's two-part drama, Angels in America. In early 1999 he also did a little-seen but much-remembered ETC Off Center show, Morris Panych's Vigil, with veteran professional actress Dale Hodges.
Almond, a CCM voice major who has found success in New York both as a performer and a creator, heard from an acquaintance that he was being considered for the production at ETC. He was performing in several shows in New Hampshire late last summer, and he agonized over how to signal his interest.
"Should I call?" he says he asked himself. "What should I do? I want them to know that I'm interested. At the beginning of September, I called Lynn. We just started talking, and over the next seven months, talking more and more and more."
Meyers thinks Almond's a perfect choice for the role of the "internationally ignored song stylist." But is he intimidated to take on a part so identified with the actor who originated it? At first he was.
"I saw (Mitchell) do it," Almond recalls. "I knew I would be doing the role, and I thought, 'Oh, God, it's impossible because he wrote this and he knows exactly how to do it.' But then I started reading the script and really taking it apart as an actor. I realized that there's so much there. A lot of it will be a challenge, but it's gonna be so much fun to make it my own."
Almond finds the show a fascinating work, even while he struggles to describe it.
"I think people will love it," he says. "I think people that don't go to theater, that are into the music scene, should come check it out, because it's not theater music. Well, it is theater music. I don't want to discourage people who like theater music, because it's very much theater music and it's about the words. But it is about pure Rock & Roll."
The show really goes beyond everyone's expectations, Almond says. "It's so much more than people think. It's not just a campy drag show. It's remarkable. You see (Hedwig) so vulnerable and then just throw off and put on a show and be campy and loud and bitchy with the audience, and then fall apart two seconds later, and pull herself back together."
So Almond is living out his own little fantasy, backed by some of Cincinnati's best Rock musicians.
"I think I always wanted to be a Rock & Roll star," he says, laughing. "We were just rehearsing in this little space, and I felt like Bon Jovi! You know what I mean? I felt like there were five million people screaming."
At 6-foot-5, Almond is looking forward to stepping into Hedwig's outrageous wig and get-up. It's likely he'll be towering over sold-out audiences, based on the show's popularity in New York. ETC has scheduled only 12 performances in a 200-seat theater, so enthusiasts might be hard-pressed to score one of the 2,400 tickets available.
"I think everybody I know that I talked to in New York said, 'Ohmigod, I can't believe how moved I was by the show. I can't believe how great the music was. I can't believe how much I loved it. I've seen it 10 times and I want to go again,' " he says. "I think people looking for a great night of just all-out, to-the-wall Rock & Roll emotion need to come."
WHO: Hedwig and the Angry Inch. · WHEN: June 6-23. · WHERE: Ensemble Theatre of Cincinnati. · TICKETS: $30 ($25 for ETC subscribers). · INFO: 513-421-3555.
