John Cameron Mitchell stars on Broadway in HEDWIG AND THE ANGRY INCH, Mitchell and Stephen Trask's landmark American musical, directed by Tony Award winner Michael Mayer (Spring Awakening). Heartbreaking and wickedly funny, this raucously entertaining show has inspired a generation.
Brilliantly innovative and raucously entertaining, Hedwig has inspired a generation. The show was called "the Best Rock Musical Ever" by Rolling Stone and "the most exciting rock score written for the theatre since, oh, ever," by Time Magazine.
Winner of the 2014 Best Musical Revival Tony Award.
Audiences flocking to this 95-minute entertainment, with book by John Cameron Mitchell and music and lyrics by Stephen Trask, may not think they have signed up for the first session of an undergraduate philosophy seminar. They have come to see Harris, a major American television star owing to How I Met Your Mother, give glam rock a workout. But the evening, even with the longueurs of its storytelling, manages to make us think about not just gender-based aspects of love but also the cold war, cheap American pop music, and the price of fame...A veteran not only of sitcoms but also of gender-bending stage shows such as Rent and Cabaret, Harris is ideally experienced to deliver Hedwig's low jokes as well as its rock 'n' roll kick-outs and tearful ballads.
The main question I had going into 'Hedwig' was how a show built on outsider-appeal and intimacy would play in a colossal Rialto venue, where just weeks ago Mark Rylance led a troupe of actors also cross-dressing ... but in the service Shakespeare. Harris quells any doubts just after his extraordinary entrance, via parachute...With respect due Harris, there's a tentativeness to his performance in the show's hallowed opening number, 'Tear Me Down'--could jumping onto car bumpers in platform heels possibly distract him from singing? But what kinetic energy!...As with any piece that is essentially a straight monologue by a single person, there are places where 'Hedwig' slows down. But 'Hedwig and the Angry Inch' is still the finest musical you're going to see this year about a transgendered Berliner with a chip on her shoulder, and it only further burnishes the crown on the head of the reigning king, and now queen of Broadway.
Videos