Theatre in Review: Hedwig and the Angry Inch (Belasco Theatre)

	Neil Patrick Harris. Photo: Joan Marcus

When the current Broadway revival of Hedwig and the Angry Inch was announced, my skepticism antenna went on high alert. The Belasco Theatre? Really? For a naturally grungy show that enjoyed a long run in the most awful dive Off Broadway had to offer? (That would be the now-shuttered Jane Street Theatre.) I felt the same way about the choice of Neil Patrick Harris as the "internationally ignored song stylist" and East German transsexual who decides to bare the bizarre details of her life journey while the lover who dumped her (and who is her partner in scandal) performs nearby to tumultuous acclaim. Harris made his name in television sitcoms, as the wholesome host of various awards shows, and in musical theatre roles, such as The Balladeer in Assassins and Bobby in Company, which call for a certain studied blandness. Wasn't he about as far from Hedwig as one could get?

Wrong, wrong, wrong. From the minute he enters, in heels and a wig that looks like it could take flight, throwing himself into the opening number, "Tear Me Down," and lying down on the stage just long enough to lick a nearby guitar, Harris' presence is enormous, his performance authoritative. He handles Hedwig's raucous jokes with true standup élan. (After his initial applause he comments, "I do love a warm hand on my entrance.") He delivers number after number at full throttle. And he handles Hedwig's story with the perfect blend of campy humor and tragic power. In a season filled with remarkable star performances, this is one of the most notable.

For the record, Hedwig and the Angry Inch is a rock concert-cum-philosophy seminar, Plato's Symposium set to a highly danceable beat and spiced with bitterly hilarious wisecracks. It's story of Hansel, growing up in East Berlin who, turning the head of an American GI, undergoes sex reassignment surgery so they can marry and to go America. The operation is a botch, leaving him with a tiny lump where his penis once was. A year later, now called Hedwig, she is divorced and living in a Kansas trailer park, working odd jobs and performing in a coffee bar to no acclaim. She takes up with a Jesus-obsessed, Dungeons-and-Dragons obsessed teenager, teaches him to sing, and christens him Tommy Gnosis. Once the slow-on-the-uptake Tommy realizes his lover's true nature, he flees, taking with him enough of her songs to make a hit album. An attempted reunion, involving oral sex and a speeding car, ends in disaster, obliterating a bus full of deaf children and landing Tommy and Hedwig on the cover of the New York Post.

For all of its wild carryings-on,Hedwig and the Angry Inch is a thoughtful, possibly profound meditation on the nature of love and sexual identity. "The Origin of Love" lays out the notion, first attributed by Plato to Aristophanes, of a creation myth involving the separation of physically conjoined beings. It is Hedwig's search for such a mate that leads to the luridly melodramatic developments listed above. And not for nothing does she give Tommy the stage name Tommy Gnosis, the surname being Greek word for knowledge. (Ironically, as in the Garden of Eden, the attainment of knowledge destroys Hedwig and Tommy's little paradise.) The show's final 15 minutes has always been something of a head-scratcher, but it seemingly involves Hedwig becoming Tommy, then finally achieving some kind of integrated self by uniting his male and female sides.

Not that you need notice this when Harris is strutting around, working the audience, cracking wise, and delivering such fabulous Stephen Trask songs as "Sugar Daddy," a tribute to the G.I. who woos Hansel with candy; "Wig in a Box," a Dolly Parton-ish ballad about Hedwig's life in Kansas; and "Wicked Little Town," the smoky, downbeat ballad with which Hedwig woos Tommy. Lena Hall, until recently known as Celina Carvajal, is a delight as Yitzhak, Hedwig's cross-dressing illegal immigrant husband and on-stage rival. (When Yitzhak's vocals become too pronounced, Hedwig simply unplugs his mic.) Hall does very, very well by "The Long Grift," the morning-after autopsy of a love affair, which might be the score's highlight, and she makes a fabulous, eleventh-hour appearance in the bustier that Yitzhak has craved all evening long. The rest of the band plays with a rocking verve rarely heard on Broadway.

For the show's Broadway debut, John Cameron Mitchell, the author (and original Hedwig), has made adjustments to the script. Hedwig is proud to be in the Belasco Theatre, and there are plenty of risqué jokes about what she had to do to Robert Wankel, president of the Shubert Organization, to obtain a booking. Recalling the many stars, from John Barrymore on, who performed there, she gratefully licks the stage. She instructs audience members sitting in one of the side boxes to watch out for the ghost of David Belasco. (At my performance, the patron she spoke to was wearing jeans and a T-shirt. "Thank you for dressing up," she said, oozing faux humility.) Commenting on "the newly annoying Meatpacking District," she even pays tribute to the Jane Street Theatre. And, in the production's most riotous new invention, we are informed that she is performing on the set of the theatre's previous tenant, Hurt Locker: The Musical. (Julian Crouch has come up with an amusing set design, a forced-perspective view of a blasted Baghdad street, with a junked automobile on stage and, overhead, a drop depicting blown up automobile parts raining down.) At one point, Yitzhak sings the love theme from Hurt Locker. "I'm sure it's better in Farsi," Hedwig notes.

Michael Mayer, who has become Broadway's go-to director for rock musicals, has made sure that this new-wave Hedwig has a production that is worthy of its theatre and star. Crouch's design includes extensive projections, most notably an animated sequence, projected on a scrim, to accompany "The Origin of Love." (The fact that Harris can stand up to such visual fireworks is a tribute to his star power.) He also provides the evening's best sight gag, a dimensional drop featuring an array of wig stands that bop along to the melody of "Wig in a Box." Arianne Phillips' costumes, including a denim-and-glitter outfit and an all-but-indescribable fur ensemble, are just as tacky and over-the-top as anyone could wish; Mike Potter's wigs and makeup complete the effect. (They include a smashing Dusty Springfield bouffant, a Farrah Fawcett flip, and an untamed Tina Turner/Chaka Khan-style mane.) The lighting designer Kevin Adams has released his inner rock star, providing bold strobe effects, rainbow chases on the upstage wall, and an array of moving units installed in the proscenium that face out at the audience. Tim O'Heir's sound design is big but not assaultive, and by and large it preserves the intelligibility of the lyrics.

For all of the show's low-camp antics and gleefully leering gags, Harris and his colleagues understand that the narrative is essentially tragic, and the star retains a certain dignity throughout. Hedwig's long, painful, ludicrous journey is toward the goal of self-acceptance, and in a show filled with dualities (male-female, east-west, communist-capitalist, gay-straight) it takes a most assured performer to balance them all. Harris is just the person, and his Hedwig is one of the most remarkable creations of the year. --David Barbour