Later tonight, sixty or so people and whoever else I can sneak in will squeeze into the experimental wing of Cambridge's American Repertory Theatre to see the cult-rock musical Hedwig and the Angry Inch, the transatlantic, transgender spectacle that took off-Broadway by surprise in 1997 (and Hollywood, to a lesser degree, two years later). Our production of Hedwig has been in planning for a few months now, so when Off Records announced earlier this year that they were putting together a Hedwig tribute album featuring takes from The Breeders and Yo La Tengo, one producer's pipedream was to get these bands to perform in our show-- to be our Angry Inch-- and (this was my idea) to charge $1,000 a ticket, maybe even $2,000, and buy a couple Camaros.

It never happened, of course; there are no Camaros, tickets are actually free, and the tribute, despite its initial hype, came out with surprisingly little fanfare. Entitled Wig in a Box, the entire project is pretty straightforward: a rag-tag team of indie rockers and b-rate musical celebrities take on the Hedwig songbook of John Cameron Mitchell and Stephen Trask. Musically, the featured acts differ in approach to the original songs-- some, like Rufus Wainwright, remain fairly conservative; some, like Bob Mould, chance with bombastic trance; and most others hedge their bets somewhere in between the two extremes, such as having a woman sing what was originally a man's song as a subtle performatization of the title character's gender conflicts. That said, the best songs on Wig in a Box are the best songs from the musical itself; in the end most Hedwig anthems can't mask their true rock musical colors, and this compilation, for all its star power, comes off largely as cult novelty.

After Rufus Wainwright's decountrification of "The Origin of Love", Sleater-Kinney recreate the quirky punk fervor of the original "Angry Inch", aided by the trademark nasal wail of B-52's co-vocalist Fred Schneider whose delivery renews lines like "when I woke up from the operation I was bleeding down there" with unspeakable creepiness. Frank Black adds teeth to the once tongue-in-cheek "Sugar Daddy", transforming it into a terrifying maniacal rant, while The Polyphonic Spree maintain the Bowie glamour of "Wig in a Box", but tastefully infuse it with flat-out awesome horn parts, harp and piano lines, and a barrage of E6-like sound effects.

There seems for Wig in a Box contributors a great challenge of liberating the songs from the musical's shackles, and providing them some semblance of autonomy. Spoon, however, are the only group here to truly succeed at this, stripping "Tear Me Down" of its boisterous theatricality, butt-rock guitar and lyrical symbolism in lines like, "I made it over the great divide." What remains is much more reserved, the guitar strumming clean straight eighths over non-confrontational tom work, as Britt Daniel effortlessly delivers the song's now-orphaned lyrics.

Wig in a Box has its share of lackluster offerings, too: both new songs-- Mitchell and Trask's "Milford Lake" and Robyn Hitchcock's "City of Women"-- are largely forgettable. Jonathan Richman's "Origin of Love Reprise" degenerates into faux-ska by its end, and Cyndi Lauper and The Minus 5's take on "Midnight Radio" finds the wash-up drenched in 80s reverb, indulging unconvincing glam tropes and, perhaps most egregiously, swallowing the song's lyrics, which could have comprised the delicate original's most interesting element. "Hedwig's Lament/Exquisite Corpse", the much-discussed collaboration of a noticeably louder Yo La Tengo with Yoko Ono, is at first endearing, but ultimately chokes on its incongruity. And while the original "Nailed" wasn't the best of songs, Bob Mould just slaughters it here, replacing whatever life it had with mindless pre-programmed trance beats and hackneyed Oakenfold through-the-matrix zoomers.

This compilation doesn't pretend to be a primer or introduction to Hedwig the musical; the very notion of a tribute album demands to some extent knowledge of that to which it pays tribute. That said, anything that keeps this compelling musical in the foreground of popular consciousness is worth something, and if a fan of Hedwig happens to be an indie rocker as well, this compilation is a delightful wedding.