Metamaiden’s Denver Hedwig Reviews: Alone Again in Some New Wicked Little Town (AUDIO)

These were my initial thoughts after seeing Euan and Hannah the first time, with some minor edits to make it a little more coherent. (I was very excited and fangirling all over the place.) My main impression was: HANNAH. My review of the evening show is below my review of the matinee.

As soon as she came out on stage I was taken with her. She looks a LOT like Lena, more than Shannon does, and she has a catlike quality that I haven’t seen in a Yitzhak before. The way she carries herself is captivating. When she made her announcement just before the show, I loved the way she spoke. She sounded a little like she was singing even then, particularly in one little part where she almost did a little trill, of sorts. Then she started SINGING. Her voice is beautiful. It’s very clear and pleasantly high-pitched but full and husky, and the way she uses it is effortlessly smooth. The little riffs and trills she does are amazing. She tends to slide down at the ends of notes (called a glissando, I’m a huge fan). Her voice reminds me of a stream, the smooth transitions she makes from note to note.

Her style is similar to Lena’s, except for the catlike way she moves, as I described above. She’s confident and sexy, but also beaten down and sweet, as is Yitzhak’s way. She loves her Hedwig a lot, which I always appreciate in a Yitz. The way she’d look at Hedwig when Hedwig was mean to her seemed to me to be her thinking, why are you being so mean to me? In an adorable way. She looked very darkly threatening towards the “kissee” (who wasn’t actually kissed today, I’ll explain that later), and snapped out of it slightly when Hedwig called her on it.

Her relationship with Euan’s Hedwig is soft and sweet, which makes sense with her seeming genuinely surprised and confused by Euan being mean to her. One of my FAVORITE moments of today: after Wicked Little Town, when Yitzhak went over to Hedwig, they put their foreheads together and just stayed like that for a good ten seconds. I dearly loved that, the two of them silently connecting in that quiet, emotional moment. After Yitz spits Hedwig in the face, Hannah seemed particularly beaten down to me. I thought she might hit the door in frustration, as other Yitzhaks have, but she seemed too devastated to make an angry gesture like that.

At the end of the show, I watched her run to the back of the theater (she ran out a door in the side rather than running all the way to the back – it’s a long theater), and I kept glancing back throughout Midnight Radio, waiting for her to return, even though I know perfectly well when Yitzhak usually comes back into the theater. I was a little too excited to see her all Krystaled up. When she finally came out, she was waving her arms around in beautiful, slow, graceful motions. When I would watch Lena walk through the audience, she just had her arms outstretched, not moving them. I loved the addition of waving her arms around before she started singing. It fit with the fluidity of her voice, symbolically. Yitzhak wanted to be beautiful and graceful all along, and at the end he can let both his voice and his body move.

WHEW, okay. I should move on to other things now. (I really loved Hannah.)

Euan was very good. His voice reminds me of Neil Patrick Harris sometimes and John Cameron Mitchell at other times. His comedic style and interactions with the audience are very much like Michael C Hall, only I liked Euan much better than MCH. Euan’s singing in Sugar Daddy and Angry Inch, in particular, remind me of NPH’s. His Origin of Love and Wig in a Box were beautiful. Particularly in Origin of Love, I very much felt the power of that song.

His Hedwig is one of the old, stiff ones. I got the sense that he was capable of doing much more with his body than he did, but made a conscious decision to make his Hedwig more old and inflexible. During Exquisite Corpse, he was very flexible and all over the place, which I liked a lot.

His Hedwig was a little too much about comedy and not quite emotionally dark and intense enough for me, but I’m saying this as someone who still has Darren in her head. Euan did the emotion beautifully. Most of the more emotionally charged songs got me. The only one that didn’t, I think, was WLTR. I was left a little underwhelmed by that compared to other Hedwigs. BUT!!! WE GOT OUR SILENCE AFTER THAT SONG! So thrilled. Euan was great during this part, and very relieved during Midnight Radio.

– At the end of Exquisite Corpse, Euan didn’t pull down his dress or take his tomato boobs out. Time saving? I don’t know. (Hannah was excellent during this song.)

– When Hedwig walked to the center of the stage with the Hurt Locker music sheet stuck to her foot and Yitzhak ran over to get it off, Hedwig started running and yelling that an animal had escaped the Denver zoo. After a minute she calmed down and said to Yitzhak, “Oh, it’s just you. Don’t run at me like that.” (Yitzhak was like ????? but also not surprised.)

– Hannah’s Yitzhak was SO EXCITED to sing the Hurt Locker. She was beside herself even as Hedwig started talking. ^.^

– When Hedwig promised us a punk rock gesture and started drinking, someone in the second (or maybe the first?) row started covering themselves with their coat 😂

– I thought the sound mixing was a little off during the loud songs, like Angry Inch. If I didn’t know the line “my sex change operation got botched,” I don’t think I would have understood it.

– When Hedwig went to pick up her wig after WLTR, Yitzhak turned farther away from her. Hannah was completely still and withdrawn throughout this.

– When Yitzhak tried to put Hedwig’s wig on her at the beginning of Midnight Radio, he tried to do it twice, not really ready to believe Hedwig when she told him no the first time. My poor babe.

– Rather than staying on the left side of the audience to play in someone’s lap after the carwash in Sugar Daddy, Euan went to the center of the front row. That’s where Hedwig walks back up onto the stage in the Buell theater.

– Instead of kissing someone, Euan licked his glasses all over multiple times.

– During Exquisite Corpse, I noticed that there were images of apes (chimpanzees? I don’t know, I’m not very familiar with non-human primates) flashing on the wall behind the stage, and not many images of humans. I don’t remember those being there in San Francisco.

– Euan YELLS “then love the front of me,” rather than saying it more quietly or heartbrokenly like other Hedwigs have. Afterwards, he puts his face in his hand for a few seconds, losing it.