Right from the outset as the eponymous heroine flew in astride a rocket, this was a full-frontal, slap-in-the-face deliciously dark fairground ride that barely let up.

Personifying the confusion and hope of 1990s Berlin in the wake of post-unification Germany, Hedwig reels from a botched gender reassignment operation and failed romances in the search to find her “other half”, rather like that once-fractured city did. [More] 

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The legacy of John Cameron Mitchell and Stephen Trask’s Hedwig and the Angry Inch is one of modest beginnings, with Mitchell playing the title character Off-Broadway back in 1998. That it went on to become a cult film and subsequently a Broadway and international success is a testament to the quality and originality of its material. Even now in 2019, with growing queer representation on our stage and screens, Hedwig still feels like a breath of fresh air in a cultural landscape that often regurgitates the same stale narratives. Where else would the story of an androgynous German lad named Hansel who undergoes gender reassignment surgery to become struggling rockstar Hedwig not only exist but be treated with a real dignity and respect?

While musical theatre is often the domain of sledgehammer-like subtlety, Mitchell’s script and Trask’s lyrics weave Hedwig’s myriad themes of love and survival against the backdrop of the Berlin Wall, immigrant dreams and rock and roll with surprising grace. No matter how far-fetched the story sounds, it is grounded in the reality of a single person baring their soul and self to the audience. [More] 

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Hedwig and the Angry Inch has been described as one of the greatest rock musicals ever written, and with good reason: more than twenty years on from its conception, it still feels vital and freshly minted, ready to kick you in the teeth with its sparkly platform heels. The Court Theatre’s marvellous, energetic production lives up to the show’s promise.

We’re here to see a gig that’s part rock concert, part confessional, helmed by genderqueer diva Hedwig (Adam Rennie), whose ambitions in love and life have been consistently thwarted. From the beginning, the set offers us a seedy space that gestures equally towards Cold War-era Berlin and the sort of gross, anonymous dive bars that exist in the social margins the world over.  

Hedwig prowls the stage, hassles the audience, cracks jokes, and berates her long-suffering backing band of illegal European immigrants (Cameron Burnett, Tyler Robbins, Emily Farrell and Tim Heeringa). She also whips her way through various iterations of herself, in a crackling demonstration of gender and identity play as self-expression and self-exploration. Massive wigs and spangled frocks go flying faster than Hedwig’s double-entendres. She’s terrifying, gorgeous, funny, sexy and captivating. Throughout, Rennie isn’t a star but an outright supernova: his stunning, virtuoso performance is ferocious in its depth and range.

I’m already very familiar with the show, but am struck again by the intelligence of John Cameron Mitchell and Stephen Trask’s writing, and the economy of the narrative and musical storytelling. The show is structured around an extended monologue, in which Hedwig tells us the story of her current crash into infamy: her East German origins as Hansel, a femme ‘slip of a ladyboy’, in the years preceding the fall of the Berlin Wall; the botched sex change operation that leaves her with an ‘angry inch’ instead of a new vagina; the sugar daddy US soldier who marries her and takes away; her shitty life in the States; and her tangled relationship with a young Christian boy who first idolises her, then becomes a rock star in his own right. The narrative is interspersed with musical numbers that range from furious, thrashing rock songs to heart-felt ballads. They propel the action forward, and crack open Hedwig’s emotional life until she’s a broken mess on the floor.

Bearing near-silent witness to all this is Hedwig’s Croatian husband and roadie, ex-drag queen Yitzhak, played with weighty sadness and vulnerability by Phoebe Hurst. The relationship between the two, and Yitzhak’s own quiet character arc, is a disturbing but ultimately redemptive counterpoint to Hedwig’s own self-myth-making.

These plot points aren’t really spoilers, but act as the scaffold for a broader story about love, loathing, bitterness and the road to healing and self-acceptance. Hedwig is desperate to find her soulmate: the person who will make her whole. However, she is blind to the way that cruelty can beget cruelty unless the cycle is broken. By the show’s soaring, uplifting conclusion, the hands-in-the-air, heart-in-the-throat anthem ‘Midnight Radio’, we’re left with something truly beautiful. As drag titan RuPaul says: if you can’t love yourself, how the hell are you gonna love somebody else? (Amen.) 

One of the most impressive aspects of the show, led by director Michael Lee Porter, is its coherent, holistic presentation. Too often it’s easy to see how even an excellent show’s production has been prepared in sections and then brought together for performance – here’s the production design, here’s some choreography, here’s the blocking, and so on.

In this production, we step into a fully realised and exquisitely detailed world, and someone else’s space, that feels as if it’s existed long before our entrance. It’s pretty hard to fault. Luke Di Somma’s music direction is impressive. Julian Southgate’s expansive backstage warehouse set design is gorgeous and grubby. Stephen Robertson’s costumes nail a sense of low-rent but aspirational punk glitz. Sound and light hit the balance between intimate cabaret, big-time rock musical and scratchy dive bar experience. Wigs are characters of their own, and the make-up (and its dissolution) is terrific.

Andrew Todd’s AV work, in particular, is a marvel. Projections and animations illustrate historic and emotional context. In a beautiful moment of layered, thoughtful staging, they also bring to life the story of ‘The Origin of Love’, the song that acts as a capsule version of the show’s narrative arc, as well as its spiritual backbone. I can’t express what a pleasure it is to watch a show that feels like a single, living, breathing organism that exists entirely on its own terms. 

Hedwig and the Angry Inch is a remarkable production that’s easily one of the best things that the Court Theatre has staged in recent memory. Its programming is also particularly salient given current, often nasty national debates about gender and identity, such as whether or not trans folk should have the right to self ID. It will leave your heart full and (more importantly) whole.

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