"Split Personality"
The Advocate, March 31, 1998
By Don Shewey
Hedwig and the Angry Inch starts off as a kind of trashy joke. Waltzing up the aisle of
the fabulously funky ballroom theater of a waterfront hotel that once housed the surviving
crew members of the Titanic, John Cameron Mitchell sports a Barbara Mandrell cotton candy
wig, a fringed denim cowgirl camisole, and a flag-striped cape, the inside of which is
spray-painted YANKEE GO HOME....WITH ME!
As Hedwig, "a mere slip of a girly boy from Communist East Germany," Mitchell
parlays a brand of hoary stage patter that Bette Midler's lounge persona, Vicki Eydie,
might admire: "I always like a warm hand on my entrance." Ba-da-boom! Hedwig is
backed by a four piece rock band dressed like Def Leppard circa 1987 and attended by her
current "husband," Yitzak (Miriam Shor, disguised behind a greasepaint goatee),
whom Hedwig says she rescued from a drag club in East Berlin, where he was lip-synching to
songs from Yentl under the drag name Crystal Nacht.
So, Ok, you think you know what you're watching: a rock and roll parody of your typical
drag act. Have another drink. The show consists of ten songs performed by Hedwig and her
band, the Angry Inch, named after what remained from the botched sex-change operation she
submitted to in order to marry a black GI, who later dumped her in a Kansas trailer park.
Between songs hooking up with a geeky 16 year old named Tommy Speck who unaccountably
turned her on. They started writing songs together, she gave him a new name, and he went
on to become Tommy Gnosis, superstar, who now plays stadiums while Hedwig languishes as an
"international unknown song stylist."
The corny yuks keep coming-- Hedwig opens the stage door and yells out, "Tommy, can
you hear me?" -- yet as the show goes on you start thinking: Hmm. Mitchell's not a
bad singer, and that band combo called Cheater, led by the show's composer, Stephen Trask)
really cranks. Together they do a pretty creditable tribute to Iggy Pop/Lou Reed/Ziggy
Stardust--era David Bowie glam rock. Plus, underneath the tacky wigs, Mitchell is still
the same fantastic young actor who distinguished himself in the Broadway musical The
Secret Garden and Larry Kramer's The Destiny of Me (the sequel to the Normal Heart). He
performs both halves of a dialogue between Hedwig and Tommy so nimbly that the characters
seem to co-exist onstage.
Then something really trippy happens. During the strobe-light seque into the final number
"Midnight Radio," Hedwig strips off her top, smashes herself with the tomatoes
that served as her falsies, paints a silver cross on her forehead and becomes charismatic
bare-chested skinny boy rock star Tommy Gnosis. When the show's over you can't really be
certain that the whole thing wasn't entirely the garbage-band fantasy of little Tommy
Speck. And what seemed like a casual reference early on--to the Platonic myth that we're
descended from round beings split by lightning and doomed to wander around searching for
our other half--turns out to be the theme of the show. Only in Mitchell's queer version we
become whole by reuniting the male and female halves of ourselves--even if it takes Dynel
wigs and pop-star fantasies. It's a sweet and substantial thought that, like the show
itself, sneaks up on you by surprise.
