Review: Hedwig and the Angry Inch

And just like that, a star is born

By Anthony Chase

Vanna Deux as Hedwig -- Photo by Eric Tronolone

From the moment Vanna Deux steps onto the stage as the "internationally ignored song stylist" Hedwig Robinson, it's clear we're witnessing something special. In Hedwig and the Angry Inch, a 2nd Generation Theatre production now at Shea’s Smith Theatre, Vanna, already established as one of Buffalo's premier drag performers, reveals a substantial theatrical pedigree that elevates this production to must-see status.

Hedwig and the Angry Inch is the story of an East German "slip of a girlyboy" named Hansel, who trades his genitals (in a botched sex-change operation) in order to marry an American GI and escape to the West. The honeymoon ends quickly. Left with an "angry inch" after the failed surgery, Hedwig is subsequently abandoned by her sugar daddy to the impoverished tedium of a Kansas trailer park. She forms a rock band and falls for a young man who steals her music and becomes a huge star under the name, Tommy Gnosis.

Through a series of rock songs and monologues, Hedwig tells her life story while pursuing her other half – both literally and figuratively – raising profound questions about identity, love, and wholeness. Vanna Deux sings the role brilliantly and embodies every painful step of Hedwig’s voyage with precision, punch, and irrepressible wit. What we witness is a tour de force of controlled chaos as this actor, vulnerable yet defiant, hilarious yet profoundly moving, delivers the interpretation of Hedwig I didn’t know I needed to see. 

John Cameron Mitchell created the Hedwig persona during the mid-1990s at New York’s SqueezeBox drag-punk club, inspired partly by his own background and a German babysitter from his childhood. Stephen Trask wrote the songs. After early performances in clubs, Hedwig premiered Off-Broadway at the Jane Street Theatre in 1998, earning critical acclaim, an Obie Award, and a devoted cult following. Recognized as a pioneering work in queer theater, the show is celebrated for its raw portrayal of gender identity and resilience, and its influence on musical theater continues to be felt worldwide.

Photo by Eric Tronolone

Naturally it’s inspired numerous productions, and these are typically done with an agenda. Often, it’s a performer seeking self-promotion in a way that allows for a bravura performance, the sort that serves as bait for all the hackneyed critical phrases -- "master class," "spot-on," "pitch-perfect," "nothing short of brilliant" – while at the same time, burnishing credentials as progressive in these oh-so-very woke times. Typically, these productions rock their little hearts out, but still seem self-conscious, and forced. They try too hard, because telling the story is not their primary goal. To paraphrase Avenue Q, there’s "a fine fine line" between progressivism and appropriation.

This production busts beyond that description. 2nd Generation Theatre has assembled a talented and sensitive team of artists headed by Michael Gilbert-Wachowiak as director and Allan Paglia as music director to tell this story. The proceedings seem delightfully unplanned and instinctive. We have happily stumbled into a club and, quite by chance, are about to see one of the most extraordinary performers of our lifetimes. She’s reached a frustrating and embittered moment in her life and career. Occasionally she swings open the fire door and we hear her loathed ex-collaborator, Tommy Gnosis, loudly amplified as he performs to a much larger crowd at Shea’s Performing Arts Center, next door – at least within the fiction. 

Vanna Deux seems entirely at ease in the role, striding onto stage on opening night with such confidence that it felt like a slice of reality, totally natural, entirely relaxed, and seemingly spontaneous. 

Of course, Hedwig does require a dose of actual spontaneity, and in terms of “working the audience,” Vanna Deux is the master/mistress of that art form, a talent honed on countless drag performances. No event in the audience goes unremarked upon. In this regard, Vanna Deux is in his/her/their element. 

But what is Vanna Deux’s element? The startling excellence of the performance sent me rummaging for my program to read the bio: “Natasha Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812 at A.R.T.; … The Sound of Music at Forestburgh Playhouse (he played Rolf – Germans seem to be a sort of specialty); Riff Raff in The Rocky Horror Show; Zsa Zsa in La Cage aux Folles at Woodstock Playhouse.” And wait -- “BA Theater Performance from Wagner College and MFA in Acting from Harvard /MXAT” – which means that our Vanna attended the Institute for Advanced Theater Training, a joint program between Harvard University’s American Repertory Theater (A.R.T.) and the Moscow Art Theatre School (MXAT). 

WTF? Apparently, this performance merely seems to have come out of nowhere. Vanna Deux is a highly accomplished artist and their credentials are certified.

Kristopher Bartolomeo as Hedwig's long-suffering husband and backup singer, Yitzhak. Photo by Eric Tronolone

As Yitzhak, Hedwig's long-suffering husband and backup singer, Kristopher Bartolomeo continues a streak of perfect casting following his recent triumph as Dorian Gray and Lord Alfred in Dorian at Irish Classical. Bartolomeo brings a seething intensity to the role, creating a compelling contrast and contradiction to Hedwig's larger-than-life presence. The power dynamics between the two performers generate an electric tension that propels the narrative forward. Their rock duet on the reprise of "Wicked Little Town" is an especially thrilling moment.

The band, credited as "The Angry Inch," delivers Stephen Trask's glam-rock score with appropriate grit and precision. Under Allan Paglia's music direction, numbers like "Sugar Daddy" and "Midnight Radio" build to exhilarating climaxes, while more introspective moments like "The Origin of Love" take on a more haunting quality.

I understand that there are some readers who are looking for a quick thumbs up / thumbs down from me accompanied by a few pithy quotable remarks.  If that describes you, you’re done and can stop reading now.  My more devoted readers might like to be reminded that the songs and text of Hedwig are impressively sophisticated.  Take for instance, "The Origin of Love," a song inspired by a tale told in Plato’s Symposium, of all things, where humans were originally whole beings-conjoined pairs with two faces, four arms, and four legs. According to the myth, the gods, fearing the power of these beings, split them in half, leaving each person searching for their "other half" -- the origin of love. The myth has fascinated modern scholars for its insistence on the gender ambiguity of sexual desire.

In the context of Hedwig and the Angry Inch, Hedwig sings "The Origin of Love" to express her longing for completeness and her belief in soulmates. The song uses vivid, almost storybook-like lyrics and imagery to depict how love is born from this ancient separation and the yearning to be whole again. This is augmented at 2nd Generation by David Butler’s playful videography. In her interpretation of songs like, "Tear Me Down" and "Wig in a Box" it becomes clear that Vanna Deux is a performer who understands that Hedwig's outrageous exterior houses a soul desperately seeking wholeness.

David Butler's set and projection design deserve further praise, particularly in how the projections integrate with the narrative's exploration of identity and division, and for the way he recreates the interior design of the Old Spain restaurant that once occupied the room in real life – a concept that was later repurposed when the Old Spain restaurant became a Swiss Chalet. The Berlin Wall imagery provides a potent visual metaphor for Hedwig's fractured sense of self as well as for a divided world. Similarly, Devin Prokop's costume and wig designs are more than mere spectacle – they're essential storytelling elements that evolve throughout the performance, as the enormity of Hedwig evolves then devolves, and the personality of Yitzhak emerges.

Director Michael Gilbert-Wachowiak has crafted a production that honors the show's punk-rock roots while never losing sight of the profound human story at its center. The pacing is impeccable, surging to a rock and roll score, while allowing moments of outrageous comedy to land fully without ever undercutting the emotional devastation beneath.

Like its charismatic protagonist, the show exists in the spaces between – neither traditional musical nor straight play, neither pure comedy nor tragedy. It's a meditation on division and wholeness, on the arbitrary borders we create and the painful cost of crossing them. The cathartic conclusion allows Hedwig to achieve a kind of integration through empathy that has eluded her throughout her life, and by then, the audience has been taken on a journey that feels like a reconciliation too.

And so, the hackneyed pull-quote phrases I have selected on this occasion are “tour de force,” “pitch-perfect,” “a must-see performance,” and “A Star is Born!” I give Hedwig and the Angry Inch ten stars. Sometimes we encounter moments of theatrical perfection so unexpectedly.