Theater

Wigs – 7 of them – make NPH’s ‘Hedwig’ one sexy lady

Clothes make the man. But it takes far more — half a dozen wigs, boatloads of beads and a size 40C bra — to transform Neil Patrick Harris into a transgender rock star.

For Broadway’s “Hedwig and the Angry Inch,” a small but ardent army of wig, dress and makeup people are charged with turning the “How I Met Your Mother” star into the “internationally ignored song stylist” of the title: a native East Berliner named Hans who, after a bungled sex change, moves to America and has a life-changing night on Broadway.

It’s a role of nearly superhuman, semi-tragic dimensions — imagine Wagner’s Brünnhilde, only thinner and in denim. As costume designer Arianne Phillips puts it: “What’s more rock ’n’ roll than jeans?”

Armed with pounds of Swarovski crystals — and beads, studs and synthetic yak hair — she and her team concocted seven outfits that Harris wears more or less simultaneously, peeling off clothes “like an onion.” Since Hedwig’s onstage nearly every moment, costume changes have to be done by dressmaking magic: underdressing, overdressing and lots of magnets.

Neil Patrick Harris’ “Hedwig” dons more than seven wigs throughout the performance.

No Velcro? “Too noisy,” says Phillips, a 16-year veteran of Madonna tours.

Harris also wears seven outfits simultaneously during the show.

“But Neil has amazing circus skills, and he’s a bona fide magician. He’s super strong, and he’s really brave.”

It takes a super strong man to jump around the stage in 4-inch-high gold boots, as Harris does.

“Those boots were the first things we made,” Phillips says.

“We had rehearsal boots for him to practice in. He wears high heels with conviction, as if he’s worn them his whole life!” All that running around while singing, stripping and emoting has taken its toll on the 40-year-old former Doogie Howser.

On “Good Morning America,” the 6-foot tall Harris said he lost 20 pounds. “I used to buy him women’s size 10 rehearsal clothes,” says Valerie Marcus Ramshur, the show’s associate costume designer. “Now he’s down to a size 6.”

Backstage the other day, she held up Hedwig’s “hair dress” — a boned leather bodice accessorized by braided synthetic hair, with a hula-like skirting of fake yak (“We looked at real yak hair and it was just disgusting”).

It seemed as if it could fit Cinderella, not Harris’ “HIMYM” character, Barney Stinson. But Barney didn’t wear a bra, either. Granted, it took a while for the costumers to nail down the right one. “We started with very high-end bras, which we do with all the celebrities on Broadway,” Ramshur says. “But we found the best bra came from Kmart. We felt that Hedwig would buy her bras at Kmart!”

We felt that Hedwig would buy her bras at Kmart!”

 - Valerie Marcus Ramshur
You can’t play Hedwig without a wig — actually, seven of them. Mike Potter has been designing Hedwig’s over-thetop coifs since 1994, when actor and writer John Cameron Mitchell introduced his creation at the downtown drag party Squeeze- Box. Potter and two assistants wash, cut and curl manes named for the looks — the Cruel Bob, Beehive and Midwest Midnight Checkout Queen among them. Hedwig’s signature wig is called the Hero: a blond helmet of tresses treated with $80-a-bottle Kérastase oil. And then there’s Hedwig’s makeup, which Potter designed as well. The final touch comes just before showtime, when Potter applies lip liner, goopy lipstick and lots of glitter to Hedwig’s mouth.

The final effect is fabulous — although the makeup designer says Harris had some initial reservations. “Neil was like, ‘Do you think she’ll be pretty?’ ” Potter recalls. “I said yes, she would be. I’ve never done a Hedwig that wasn’t pretty.”

“I don’t want Hedwig to be a monster,” Potter continues.

“Neil has to go out in the audience every night, grinding in people’s faces. There could be some straight man from New Jersey, and he might look up and think, ‘That’s not a guy — that’s a sexy lady!’