About This Show
New Line Theatre and the Washington Avenue Players Project (WAPP) present the outrageous neo-glam rock musical, Hedwig and the Angry Inch. With music and lyrics by Stephen Trask and a book by John Cameron Mitchell (who originated the title role), the show places its audience at a concert given by the transsexual rock singer Hedwig, as she shares with us her often tragic life story.
She began life as Hansel, a boy in East Berlin before the Berlin Wall came down. An American soldier meets Hansel and they fall in love, but for the soldier to bring him back to America, Hansel has to go through a physical exam and be proved a woman. So the soldier takes him to a back alley surgeon for a sex change operation, but it’s horribly botched, leaving Hansel with just an “angry inch.” Back in America, the soldier abandons Hansel — now Hedwig — and she is left in a trailer park in Kansas near a military base. There she meets Tommy Speck, a general’s son, they fall in love, and Hedwig transforms him into the rock star Tommy Gnosis (a word meaning mystical or spiritual knowledge). But Tommy also abandons Hedwig, and she is left playing small tacky venues, while Tommy plays major stadiums. Now, with her band, The Angry Inch, and her eastern bloc husband Yitzak, Hedwig tells us her story…
Scott Miller directs.
