GOODBYE DEXTER, HELLO HEDWIG
Michael C. Hall goes from playing a killer to slaying Broadway,
NEW YORK— Michael C. Hall is killing them every night at the Belasco Theatre, where he’s starring in the Tony Award-winning revival of Hedwig and the Angry Inch.
But that shouldn’t come as a surprise to the millions of fans who saw him dispatch dozens of illstarred souls in a plastic-lined “kill room” during his eight seasons on Dexter and, before that, serving as undertaker for many more during five seasons of Six Feet Under.
Like John Keats, Hall has definitely been “half in love with easeful death,” so it shouldn’t be a surprise that his Hedwig, while delivering all the expected notes of humour, sexuality and sheer rocking awesomeness, manages to tap into a considerable amount of darkness along the way.
“I just try to do what I do every time I encounter a character. I try to be the guardian of what I understand to be their truth,” says Hall, sitting in the theatre on a recent blustery afternoon.
“Hedwig is obsessive, bitter, angry, deeply hurt and yet somehow still lovable for all the lemonade she’s made out of the lemons life gave her.”
She is indeed. Originally created by author John Cameron Mitchell and songwriter Stephen Trask way off-Broadway in 1998, Hedwig tells the story of a bizarre young German singer who wants to marry an American GI during the time of the Berlin Wall only to suffer a botched sex-change operation trying to turn herself into a woman. That’s the “angry inch” of the title.
Since its debut, it’s been seen in hundreds of productions around the world and spawned a cult 2001 film, but even its biggest fans might have had trouble picturing it as a sellout hit on Broadway, winning four Tony Awards, including one for Best Revival of a Musical.
“I think it’s a testament as to how far we’ve come in terms of our acceptance of non-normative gender portrayals that Hedwig can be a Broadway hit,” says Hall.
“We can all relate to her struggle, whether we have physical, emotional or psychic scars that we carry with us and struggle to come to terms with before finally letting it go. Hedwig is every woman and every man.”
Acting Hedwig is one thing, but Trask’s score makes strenuous vocal demands on the actor playing the role, calling on them to sing in a variety of styles from David Bowie to Lou Reed and be convincing in all of them.
That’s the real surprise about Hall’s performance. He had a long run in Cabaret on Broadway and has also appeared in Chicago, but he admits that “I’ve never sung in this style before. At least not in front of other people. When I first saw this show, I wanted to be in it, the way you want to be in the band when you see a rock group you love.
“I never dreamed it would happen. I never thought it could happen. But I got the invitation to live out my fantasy and so here I am.” But it wasn’t easy. “There were times in the rehearsal process when I’d look at myself in the mirror and just wish I could cut my arms off and replace them with smaller, more graceful arms.
“But then I thought, ‘There she is. That’s Hedwig.’ She is not who or what she is by choice, but she’s decided to work with it and so I did the same.”
You could also say that’s just what Hall did with his life.
“I never dreamed it would happen. I never thought it could happen. But I got the invitation to live out my fantasy and so here I am.” MICHAEL C. HALL
Born in Raleigh, N.C., in 1971, to an IBM executive and a college guidance counsellor, there was a shadow over him from the start due to the death of his infant sister before his birth, which had made his parents more religious.
“I grew up in a Christian family, went to church with my mom and dad, and saw the sense of meaning and purpose and clarity it seemed to give to their lives.”
Hall would need that when his father died of prostate cancer at the age of 39, when Hall was only 11.
“In the years following my father’s death, I tried to believe in the church the way my other relatives did, but it just didn’t work for me. No, I don’t identify as a Christian now.” And then he quotes Hedwig, “But I love his work.” Still, the loss of his father left a hole. “I relate to anyone who has the lack of a strong male in their lives. It has so much to do with my story. I’m someone who simultaneously craves that masculine guidance but also shuns it at the same time. I also wear it like a badge of honour. I did it on my own.”
Indeed, a father figure withdrawn too soon is at the heart of many of Hall’s projects: Six Feet Under, Dexter and, now, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, works that are also fairly saturated in death.
When asked about it, Hall looks up and locks eyes. “I didn’t choose that path, but I can’t deny it seems a bit beyond coincidental at this point. I have an attraction to stories and material like that. That’s all there is to it.”
Hall began singing at school shortly after this father’s death, which led him into studying theatre at Earlham College in Richmond, Ind., and NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts.
He worked steadily for an assortment of prestigious companies such as the New York Shakespeare Festival, the Manhattan Theatre Club and the Mark Taper Forum, before Sam Mendes cast him to replace Alan Cumming as the Emcee in the award-winning revival of Cabaret.
That soon led to his getting cast as David, the OCD gay funeral director in Six Feet Under, which was followed immediately by Dexter, the blood-spatter expert who moonlights as a serial killer.
The two long-running series made Hall a star, but they also took a toll on him.
“When you take on a role that feels really right for you, it really resonates at first. Initially, it feels very therapeutic to explore it, but after a while you start to feel like you’re just tilling this dead soil.
“There were times at the end of both series when I felt I was out of gas when it came to exploring my doormat issues, my fastidiousness, my struggle with my sense of authenticity or my misdirected suppressed rage. It does a number on you.”
He looks off into the distance, thinking for a moment.
“There’s a part of us that doesn’t recognize the difference between ritual and reality. I think there’s some kind of cellu- lar encoding that takes place.”
The process was complicated during Dexter by the fact that Hall was diagnosed with cancer (Hodgkin’s lymphoma) at 38. He underwent treatment and was in remission by 39, which is when cancer had claimed his father’s life.
“Of course that was tough to deal with,” admits Hall, “but when you’re in the middle of it, somehow you just keep keeping on.”
Hall’s cancer, treatment and remission occurred between seasons 4 and 5 of Dexter, after which Clyde Phillips, the show’s creator, decided to leave the project.
“It became difficult for me after that for a variety of reasons, including coping with my cancer and dealing with the fact that my wife, Rita, had been killed off at the end of Season 4,” shares Hall.
“Dexter was reeling after that and so was I. I don’t think that my performance or the show fully gained its equilibrium again.”
Looking back, Hall feels that “it was a tragic story. Dexter wasn’t done in by his monstrosity. He was done in by having been seduced by the idea that he could be human.”
There’s one misconception about the series, however, that he’s eager to correct.
“Doing the kill scenes was actually the least stressful part of playing Dexter, in a way. Those were the scenes when I could just be who he was.
“I would endow the person I was killing with some aspect of myself that I would like to do away with. Back to ritual. It works every time.”
Right now, however, he’s more than happy playing Hedwig seven times a week.
“It’s truly an amazing role. You know, if Hamlet sang all his soliloquies backed up by a rock band, you have an idea of what it’s like. A man searching for his true identity. Trying to make sense of his parents’ behaviour. Wondering where he fits in the world. ‘To be or not to be.’ That is surely Hedwig.”