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Musical About TS

"Hedwig and the Angry Inch"

By Associated Press
Contributed by Elizabeth Parker
New York

Hedwig Schmidt is not your average transsexual.

She, er, he never quite completed the operation that would have transformed him into her. There was a little bit left over, so to speak, which is where "Hedwig and the Angry Inch," a wild and wonderful "neo-glam, post-punk rock musical," gets its title.

We are talking identity crisis here, of both Hedwig, a self-styled "girlie boy," and of the American musical, stretched into a provocative evening of ditsy decadence, punctuated by a terrific rock score. Both survive the transformation.

What author and star John Cameron Mitchell has done is create something that defies easy categorizing, although its vibrant theatricality is not in doubt.

Mitchell's Teutonic title character -- an "internationally ignored" song stylist -- delivers what is essentially an 80-minute cabaret show in the faded ballroom of the real-life Hotel Riverview on the far west fringes of Greenwich Village. It's hilarious mock-confessional autobiography, chock-full of political and show business asides and a liberal dose of raunch.

Hedwig's story certainly is exotic. Born in what was then East Berlin, our hero -- then called Hansel -- finds fleeting happiness with an American serviceman who suggests marriage and then a sex-change operation, in that order. The operation doesn't quite succeed, but Hansel, now Hedwig, finds himself in a Kansas trailer park.

Hedwig finds relief with Tommy Gnosis, a young rocker on his way to superstardom. Tommy later abandons Hedwig, too; in fact, as "Hedwig and the Angry Inch" opens, he is performing just across the Hudson River at a major stadium concert in New Jersey's Meadowlands. Is Hedwig bitter? You bet, which leads to much lamenting, a lot of it hostile and a lot of it very, very funny.

Mitchell, looking like the offspring of Farrah Fawcett and Rum Tum Tugger from "Cats," handles the pulsating, heavy-duty score written by Stephen Trask, with surprising ease. He is a strong singer and an accomplished actor.

Hedwig is accompanied by a band called the Angry Inch, in reality a gritty rock troupe called Cheater, and a sexually ambiguous backup singer named Itzhak, portrayed by Miriam Shor.

Yet it is Mitchell who must carry the show -- and he does. The dynamic performer turns "Hedwig and the Angry Inch" into a tough-talking and hard-driving tour de force.



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