Review Roundup: HEDWIG AND THE ANGRY INCH Tour Launches in San Francisco

Darren Criss and Lena Hall just launched the highly anticipated National Tour of Hedwig and the Angry Inch, the 2014 Tony Award-winning Best Musical Revival, reprising their critically-acclaimed performances at the SHN Golden Gate Theatre in San Francisco (October 2-30) and the Hollywood Pantages Theatre in Los Angeles (November 1-27).

Hedwig and The Angry Inch, with music and lyrics by Stephen Trask and book by John Cameron Mitchell, directed by Michael Mayer, has received rave reviews for its Broadway run and is the winner of four Tony Awards including Best Musical Revival. It was also awarded Best Musical Revival by the Drama Desk Awards, Drama League Awards, and Outer Critics Circle Awards. The Grammy-nominated Original Broadway Cast album for Hedwig and the Angry Inch is available from Atlantic Records.

Let's see what the critics had to say...

Lily Janiak, SF Gate: As excellent as Criss is in the part, Hall's Yitzhak, for which she won a 2014 Tony Award, was so mesmerizing at the Wednesday, Oct. 5, opening that you can't help but want more of her. She gives an effortlessly fluttery, pitch-perfect rendition of Whitney Houston's version of "I Will Always Love You" (the show's set in the wake of the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall); and in her one big solo, "The Long Grift," she combines orchestra-quality phrasing with the jagged timbre of a rock star. She delivers much of that song in a breathy sotto voce, with which she communicates plenty, so acute is her stage presence, but its one big crescendo suggests untapped potential for rocking out. Well, not wholly untapped. At four performances during the show's run, Hall will switch roles and play Hedwig - this production marks the first time in the show's history that one actor will perform the two different parts - with Shannon Conley taking over as Yitzhak.

Karen D'Souza, Mercury News: Michael Mayer's glitzy Broadway revival of John Cameron Mitchell's '90s cult classic retains its raunchy double entendres, its habit-forming score (Stephen Trask) and its gleefully cheesy rimshot gags. If "Hedwig and the Angry Inch" has lost some of its hard indie edges over the years, it has gained an endearing turn by Darren Criss (stepping into the stilettos previously worn by Neil Patrick Harris, Michael C. Hall and Taye Diggs) and a scary-good Yitzhak (Lena Hall) in its national tour launch at San Francisco's Golden Gate Theatre.

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