Girls Will Be Boys and Boys Will Be Girls
Stomping around the stage like Godzilla terrorizing Tokyo, the “internationally ignored song stylist” Hedwig (Darren Criss) spends nearly two hours performing what is less a traditional musical and more an almost one-man drag/cabaret show. An East Berliner who was seduced and abandoned by an American G.I., he finally made it to America after the botched sex change referred to in his band’s name, The Angry Inch: “My guardian angel fell asleep on the watch / Now all I got is a Barbie Doll crotch,” he sings in the show’s title song. He is headlining what he claims is a one-night-only concert at the famous Belasco Theatre, where Brando exploded in 1946 and John Barrymore sang his swan song in 1939. Based on the film by John Cameron Mitchell, Hedwig and the Angry Inch is every inch a rock ‘n’ roll musical, with its star rending his heart from his chest for all to see while he sings (or, rather, shrieks) with a manic energy that is half expert showmanship and half narcissistic insecurity. Continue reading “Girls Will Be Boys and Boys Will Be Girls”