“Now all I got is a Barbie doll crotch.”

Mike’s rating: 4 out of 5 gender-bending fender benders

Mike’s review: Hedwig and the Angry Inch was formative for me in so many ways, it’s kind of amazing it took me 23 years to ever actually get a review written down.

It was my first real glimpse into the grimy world of indie cinema (along with Ghost World, which I saw the same day in a double feature, forever connecting the two in my mind). It was one of the first times I was presented with a protagonist who was not always likable, and in point of fact was sometimes an absolute jerk with a capital C. It was my first foray into genderqueer art, and with my hyper-conservative evangelical upbringing, it was the first time that a character with an alternative sexuality was presented to me as anything other than a joke or a warning. Of course, I was also a blue haired ska/punk/hardcore fanatic, so how could this little punk-rock drag musical do anything other than fix itself inextricably to my psyche, whether I liked it or not?

Hedwig is, at its core, a story about the search for love, acceptance, and identity when everything in existence seems purposefully designed to keep these things from you. Cast in the role of tragic heroine by the whims of cruel fate, Hedwig is a drunken, abusive, vulgar mess. Of course, you’d be a little messed up too if you were a gay rock-and-roll-obsessed kid growing up in Communist East Berlin who fell in love and got a sex-change to leave the country… only to have the operation get botched, leaving you with the titular “angry inch” where female genitalia should have gone.

By the time we meet her, Hedwig has been so roughed up by her search for love that she’s literally touring with her band just to stalk her ex, a Billy Corgan lookalike who dumped her, took off with all the songs she wrote and made a fortune off them. Along for the ride are Hedwig’s band, a collection of vaguely east-European punk rockers, which include Hedwig’s new husband Yitzhak, played by Miriam Shor.

A word or two about the much put-upon Yitzhak: His role is clearly to prop up Hedwig as the “Punk Rock Star of Stage and Screen” that she imagine herself to be, but the audience picks up on a few things throughout the movie. First, Yitzhak is more talented than Hedwig and has higher aspirations than just being Hedwig’s “man Friday through Thursday.” Second, Hedwig knows it and is massively threatened by it. Third, Hedwig isn’t above exploiting Yitzhak’s worship of her, gaslighting him, abusing him, and, ultimately, actively sabotaging him to keep from being upstaged. The dynamic between them is toxic, but there are moments, subtle little hints of affection here and there, that make their interactions in the final number all the more heart-breaking.

Hedwig goes from outlandish laugh-out-loud moments to achingly poignant moments of pathos and catharsis seamlessly and without warning as Hedwig chronicles her life-long search for her “other half.” John Cameron Mitchell, who wrote, directed, and stars in the movie after workshopping the character for months in drag clubs and Off-Broadway, commands the screen as Hedwig, leading us through the Dante’s Inferno of her life’s journey that’s brought her to this gig touring various Bilgewater’s Seafood franchises. Hedwig is at turns defiant and haunted, hilarious and tragic, caustic, yet vulnerable and hiding the deepest scars, physical and otherwise. Plus it really pisses her off when you put a bra in a dryer. It warps, that’s why.

JCM navigates these emotional waters with the confidence of an Oscar winner while at the same time writing and directing. He’s good enough to have had a Lin Manuel Miranda-sized career yet has stayed largely in the indie world. Honestly, mainstream Hollywood could use a few more “out-of-the-box” creators like this guy.

The music here, though, is the real draw. The soundtrack by Stephen Trask (who also co-wrote the script and stars as the lead guitar player of Hedwig’s band) is one of those no-skip CDs of yore. Every song here is an absolute bop. Hedwig grabs you from the first guttural guitar riffs of “Tear Me Down,” through the hauntingly beautiful retelling of Plato’s Symposium that is “Origin of Love,” and climaxing in the cathartically brutal one-two punch of “All Sewn Up” and “Midnight Radio,” never once letting you go. The music chronicles a sad, hilarious, psychotically beautiful journey of discovery through the dark night of the soul, finally grinding to a halt as Hedwig (along with the audience) walks naked out of a random alley and lurches out into the night, still worn down but perhaps a bit wiser and more hopeful for all her struggles.

There’s something powerfully relatable about the search for a soul mate, even if it’s an East German transgender punk rock drag queen doing the searching. It’s that desire that has resonated with Hed-heads the world over and kept this little Off-Broadway curiosity relevant and grown it into a massive Broadway hit that has starred the likes of Darren Criss, Michael C. Hall, and Neil Patrick Harris. We want love, acceptance, identity, and that feeling of being complete. We all want to rebel and scream into the night over the injustices and humiliations life loves to blindside us with.

Yes. when all is said and done, there’s a little Angry Inch inside all of us.

DnaError’s rating: Shtupendous! Mavhelous!

DnaError’s review: If jazz was once called “the dirty girl done good,” then rock can be called the villain at the end of the movie. No matter how many times you think it’s dead, it pops up to headbang once again.

For a while in the late ’90s, it appeared that rock might have finally bit the bullet. Gone was the abandon, the frenzy, the cathartic madness. We would have been forced to listen to empty, slick, dancable numbers forever if Hedwig hadn’t reared his/her blonde wig and shouted back the shake, rattle and roll back into rock.

First thing out of the way. Hedwig and the Angry Inch is *not* like Rocky Horror. Both have guys in drag and both have music, but exist on two entirely different planes. Rocky is a comedy, a naughty spoof that relishes in it’s own brazenness. Hedwig however, is more like a tragic opera, swelling and bursting with pathos, love, obsession, and music. It’s funny, ironic, mournful, and truthful, and contains the best pure rock soundtrack of the last 10 years.

What Hedwig accomplishes, what makes it great, is that it gets to the roots of artistic drive. At the beginning of drama, the worship of Dynosisis called the Dithrabum, called for screaming and tearing of hair, all to the achieve kathkos (where we get “catharsis”), a purging of emotion and pain through large public ritual. Hedwig recreates this atmosphere with a whirlwind tour of pop-culture and American music, until it all reaches an operatic fever pitch.

It’s all so overpowering, so earnest, so up-front about love and desire, about art’s role in passion, that by the end you want to scream out as well. Don’t be scared off by the dresses, guys, this is a story that will cut you in two, about the most basic things in life. It also has a kickin’ soundtrack and moments of obscene hilarity. Hedwig creates the atmosphere of a rock concert playing directly to you, a modern dithrabum of one. What more can you ask of art?

Intermission!

• The original stage show opened off broadway at Jane Street Theater, a venue which had previously housed survivors of the Titanic. All the wallpaper at Bilgewaters restaurant display pictures of the ocean liner as a nod to the origins of the show.
• The show originally ended with a cover of Debbie Boone’s “You Light Up My Life” but they couldn’t get the rights so “Midnight Radio” was written to close the show.
• John Cameron Mitchell workshopped the character of Hedwig for months. His first time ever doing drag was when he appeared as Hedwig at Squeezbox, an NYC drag club.
• The “Car-Wash” was a holdover from the stage show. A seat was kept open for VIP guests, who would inevitably get car-washed during the show.
• An real life appearance on the Rosie O’Donnell show from when Mitchell was plugging for the live show is shown in a montage depicting Hedwig’s rise to stardom.
• Actors of note who have played Hedwig on and off-broadway include Neil Patrick Harris, Lena Hall (who also played Yitzhak), Darren Criss, Taye Diggs, Andrew Rannells, Michael C. Hall, Ally Sheedy and Anthony Rapp.
• Co-writer Stephen Trask stars in the movie as a member of the “Angry Inch”, wrote the songs and is also the singing voice for Hedwig’s ex, Tommy Gnosis.
• For six minutes of sheer epic spectacle, go to YouTube and look up NPH at the Tony awards as Hedwig singing “Sugar Daddy”, originally a more country-flavored number which was reimagined as a more punk-rock song for the Broadway revival.
• In that performance, NPH gives Orlando Bloom the “car wash” which has to be seen to be believed.