Hedwig and the Angry Inch
play: Hedwig and the Angry Inch
director: Amy Hubbard
when: July 14th to August 5th FINISHED
where: Black Box Theatre
cost: Thurs. $8, Fri-Sun $16, seniors and students $12
about: Hedwig is a story about finding love, generally. Specifically it involves a boy named Hansel who grew up during the Berlin Wall Era on the Eastern Communist side of the wall. His goal was to get over the wall, but how? As he grows up he listens to the American Forces radio hearing the great rock and rollers of the period and falls in love with them. In his desire to go over the wall he meets an American G.I. named Luther who mistakes him for a girl. Luther is willing to bring Hansel over to the West by marrying him, but first Hansel must officially become a woman. Well, the poor boy's sexual reassignment surgery doesn't go well and so the title comes "And the Angry Inch." Hansel changes his name to Hedwig but a year after he moves to America with Luther, Luther leaves him. Hedwig has a fabulous affair with Tommy Spec who shares in her desire to play music and they perform "selling out monster truck rallies in Witchitaw" until Tommy discovers the truth about the angry inch. Tommy steals Hedwig's songs and becomes terribly and undeservably famous. Hedwig is left, once again, to scrounge the pieces of her life back together and plan a parallel tour to Tommy's in order to get what was hers back again. At the end its your decision whether or not she succeeds.
review:
I have always enjoyed the movie version of this. I often wondered how it had started as a play in the first place, as the movie had been so precise and vivid. So when I heard that Knoxville, of all places, was putting it on I was a little more than ecstatic, if not a bit nervous of the results.
The setting is in the Black Box Theatre (which, by the way, is a black box theatre in style as well as name, imagine that!). What a black box theatre is, is, well, a large black box. The theatre is perfect for interactive pieces as well as actors who find their forte is expressing themselves in a more subtle way than dramatic gestures and overly wide eyes and mouths. And it was also a perfect setting for a German Drag Queen character who's supposed to be performing in the crappy doppleganger bars and theatres of her arch enemy, Tommy "Gnosis." I couldn't have picked a more perfect theatre for the production, frankly. The only drawbacks to a black box theatre, really, is the limited number of people who can fit.
Most black box theatres use minimal sets and more implication of an object existing than acutally having a fifty foot tree or lake set. With this play, though, the sets were nearly accurate. There was a band and this was the setting. You became part of the play and not a viewer. You were an important part. You were Hedwig's ever faithful fans or her disgruntled happenstance audience.
The band (Nathan Barrett, Lucas Flatt, Mike Murphy) that this production used was perfect. Just the right amount of clueless, immigrant stares and boredom at their diva's less-than-par comedy routine--which is actually pretty funny. They also rocked the night by playing some of the best songs from a musical you'll ever hear.
The acting blew me away. Joseph Beuerlein, who played Hedwig, gave just the right amount of bitterness but passion as well. His portrayal of the key figures in Hedwig's life and the depth he gave to an otherwise hard to relate to character woos me to no end. There were so many things that could have gone awry in this production and the sensitivity of fans to the story, but everything went more than right.
Jodie Manross played Yitzhak, Hedwig's husband. Dressed in boy-drag, Jodie had my heart. So wonderful with the resentful brooding. I almost regretted seeing her as a woman again after it was all over. And, as always, a voice that would woo baby's to sleep while calling lost sailors from their travels.
But my mother put it best: "I didn't know how you were going to get what was in the movie into a play, but you did it!"
If you missed your chance to see Hedwig and the Angry Inch this time cross your fingers for a tentative comeback on Halloween. Nothing cemented, that I know of. Just talk around the wine cooler, so far.
E.M.Green approved.
posted by Green @ 8:05 PM
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