Hedwig and the Angry Inch

Here is a ‘rock opera’ that is fearlessly more than a rock opera: it is a layered mash-up of genres, musical references and allusions – from the glam rock of 1970s Bowie, plus Lou Reed, Iggy Pop, the Velvet underground and more – Mitchell and Trask repurposing the lyrics of many songs to fit the story.  Hedwig uses rock music, cabaret, on-stage drama, a confessional narrative, a rock concert setting and melds it all into one loud, glittering, angry, funny eighty-five minutes.  Based originally on some aspects of John Cameron Mitchell’s own boyhood experiences and encounters, the centre of the piece is ‘genderqueer’ Hedwig (a towering, dominating, edgy, bitchy Seann Miley Moore), fronting her band, The Angry Inch, and telling us the story of her life. 

We scarcely notice – or if we do, we don’t care – that her story begins in dire poverty in East Germany behind that divisive Wall...  Hedwig back then was girlyboy Hansel Schmidt, obsessed with the banned music on American Services Radio... 

But what is the ‘angry inch’? It’s what’s left after botched surgery – to which Hansel/Hedwig submitted so as to pass a physical examination and escape East Germany with his lover, American serviceman Luther Robinson...  only to end up a divorcée in Kansas...

Now, (many) years later, Hedwig is powerful performer, in platinum blonde Germanic wig and a patchwork denim costume (design by Nicol and Ford).  What’s on stage is a rock concert - but Hedwig is performing in a venue where Hedwig’s former not quite lover, the hugely successful Tommy Gnosis, is performing in the very next and much larger room...  Tommy was repulsed by the angry inch but stole the songs he and ‘my girl’ Hedwig wrote together.  Every now and then, Hedwig sneaks up to the back of Jeremy Allen’s set, opens a door – and a gust of pink light and music and success hits her in the face.  This is a story of two betrayals.  But it doesn’t end there.  Hedwig may be down, but she’s not defeated...

Hedwig began as a different show - but not that different – what has persisted is John Cameron Mitchell’s rage at cruelty, injustice and the way people who are ‘different’ are treated.  As far back as 1994 the show was tried out and altered and developed and refocussed - but not in theatres.  Rather it was in live performances in bars, dives and clubs before finally becoming an Off Broadway hit in 1998.  Since then, it has had more iterations and permutations and has also been performed in country after country...  In the right hands, it has a magnetic attraction for audiences. 

There is too another disturbing layer.  Hedwig is attended on stage by her ‘husband’ Jewish Yitzhak (Adam Noviello) who is most of the time mute, repressed and resentful at Hedwig’s bullying and rudeness.  German and Jew.  Yitzhak (the role is often played by a woman), in grey worker’s clothes, literally fetches and carries, like a servant, makes mumbled announcements, and obeys Hedwig’s rule that he must never take over the stage... Until he does.  Noviello’s performance is in total contrast to Miley Moore, but in its seething, intriguing way, equally impressive as a brooding, enigmatic presence – and they sing beautifully too. 

Hedwig and the Angry Inch is a vastly entertaining show – paradoxically furiously angry but slick and funny and bursting with energy.  It is on one level simple and at the same time very complex.  It’s worth noting too, as pointing to that complexity and the making of the show’s own space, what John Cameron Mitchell said about his creation.  ‘Hedwig is not a transwoman but a genderqueer character... She’s more than a woman or a man.  She’s a gender of one... She’s meant to be a queer voice but not meant to be specifically transgender... [the sex change] is not a choice... Hedwig doesn’t speak for any trans community because she was... mutilated.’

And not just by the surgeon, but by life.  Hedwig’s resistance makes her irresistible.

This production, fresh from five-star reviews in Adelaide, is certainly in the right hands.  It assaults us with its spikey vivacity and charisma.  And now, rather than a ‘revival’ or a period piece, its rage is suddenly – if so sadly – apposite when what’s happening to LGBTIQ+ people feels like the ‘90s all over again.

Michael Brindley     

Photographer: Eugene Hyland