Lena Hall won a Tony Award for playing a woebegone man in Hedwig and the Angry Inch. After more than a year of eight shows a week as the beaten-down Yitzhak, it's not surprising that her first post-Hedwig endeavor is about cutting loose.
Just four days after her final performance in Hedwig on April 4, Hall debuted a cabaret show at Cafe Carlyle that defies expectations that come with the "cabaret" label. That show, dubbed Sin and Salvation, is now bringing her to Feinstein's at the Nikko on April 24 and 25. It will be the first time she has performed in her hometown since a touring company of Cats swept her away 17 years ago.
When Cafe Carlyle first reached out to Hall to perform in a room where Elaine Stritch, Barbara Cook, and Bobby Short made themselves at home, Hall had her doubts. "I said, 'Well, do you guys know how and what I sing, because this isn't going to work if you expect me to be singing show tunes?' And they said, 'No, just do what you want.' Now we'll see how everybody feels about it."
Hall was talking from New York a couple of days before her final Hedwig performance and a week before opening at Cafe Carlyle. The subsequent reviews have mostly been enthusiastic, and universally have praised her powerful voice and her ability to tailor her Led Zeppelin-Janis Joplin predilections to the usually staid surroundings.
"I'm not going to be wild and in jeans or anything like that," Hall said. "I'll be wearing a Zac Posen dress that has a very 1930s look and is so completely opposite of what I'm singing. It's like I've stepped out of an old movie, and then I'm singing these blues and soul and rock songs that come from the depths of my being."
Hall is covering songs first sung by such artists as Elton John, Paul McCartney, Jack White, David Bowie, James Brown, and Robert Plant, and she terms much of the repertoire as "male-centric," although Tori Amos, Erykah Badu, and Janelle Monae are also represented. "A lot of the songs come from a man's perspective, and I never feel that's any kind of issue," she said. "I don't change the pronouns or anything like that."
Asked about her attraction to a male-centric vibe, she riffed on her reasoning. "OK, I'm doing this song called 'Maybe I'm Amazed,' and there are lyrics like, 'Maybe I'm a man, maybe I'm a lonely man,' and it will be, like, yeah, in the context of how I interpret the song, I think because I've been playing a biological male for so long, I feel that gender is no longer here nor there. So if I'm singing about that, maybe I am a man deep down inside. It all makes sense in my weird world."
Hall probably had something of a weird childhood growing up in San Francisco, but it seemed fine to her. "My mother and father still live in the Haight-Ashbury house where I grew up, and when I use the term 'hippie' to describe them, I mean hippie for real," Hall said. "My parents always wanted me to stay in the arts, and anytime I suggested maybe I didn't want to be in the arts, they would just stare."
She's a graduate of the Ruth Asawa San Francisco School of the Arts, and her classmates knew her then as Celina Carvajal. She had just turned 18 when she auditioned at an open call for the touring company of Cats, and was soon on the road as the feline known as Demeter. "I cried so hard on the plane because I was so scared. I was suddenly an adult."
Hall eventually moved to the Broadway company of Cats, then landed ensemble roles in the Broadway casts of 42nd Street, Tarzan and Dracula. She then walked away from Broadway. "I was just so not happy," she said. "I knew there were people out there who would be thrilled to be in my shoes. But being in the ensemble doesn't give you any opportunity to be creative, and I wanted to be more in control and to be passionate about things I give so much time to."
Hall took on smaller theater projects that stoked her passions, and also made music with the rock band The Deafening that is still part of her creative life. She finally returned to Broadway in Kinky Boots, playing the image-conscious fiancee of the callow young man who has inherited a failing shoe factory.
When the Broadway production of Hedwig starring Neil Patrick Harris was announced, Hall aggressively pursued the role of Yitzhak, Hedwig's roadie husband, who comes into his/her own at the end of the musical. Hall worked with all four Hedwigs to date: Harris, Michael C. Hall, Andrew Rannells, and John Cameron Mitchell.
Despite pleas from fans, Hall does not include any Hedwig songs in her cabaret show. "It was time to separate myself from that and do my own thing," Hall said. But she's not turning her back on Broadway or the theater. "There are tons of things coming my way. I just did a workshop of a new David Byrne musical about Joan of Arc that's right up my alley. But I need a little time off from the eight-shows-a-week schedule."
She also needs some time for her body to repair itself from a year of masculinity. Suggesting a male posture in Hedwig has done a number on her back and shoulders, and she has ripped tendons from the heavy lifting required of the character. "And my hands," Hall said, "they used to be really pretty and feminine, and now I have man hands."
Hall did get to keep the rubber penis that gave her a manly bulge. "Neil Patrick Harris autographed it," she said. "It was with an indelible marker, but it wore off anyway."
Lena Hall will perform Sin and Salvation at Feinstein's at the Nikko on April 24 & 25. Tickets are $40-$55. Call (415) 394-1100 or go to www.ticketweb.com.