Cult shows never die; they’re just reborn at a time of their own choosing. Stephen Trask and John Cameron Mitchell’s defiantly genderqueer rock musical Hedwig and the Angry Inch returns at what feels like the perfect juncture, as the tides of history turn and trans people around the world are threatened with violence and erasure. A vivid and electrifying middle finger to intolerance and hate, Hedwig seems more necessary than ever.
The role of Hedwig, a “slip of a girlyboy”, has long been coveted by musical theatre performers in a similar way that Shakespeare’s Cleopatra is sought after by great actors – as a kind of zenith of the craft. The characters share certain qualities: they’re quixotic and mercurial, tragicomic and self-mythologising; they can be incredibly cruel to the people around them; they love more passionately and completely than mere mortals.They’re grand queens who command undivided attention.
Australia had one notable Hedwig in 2006 with iOTA in the central role, and an aborted production which was due to star Hugh Sheridan in 2020. Now it’s Seann Miley Moore’s turn to don the glitter boots and Princess Leia wig in a production so attuned to their talent it often feels as if the show was written for them. Adelaide’s aptly named Queens theatre heaves and sweats under the raw power of Moore’s charisma, which they turn on the audience like a searchlight.
Hedwig’s story is a complicated one in many ways and yet its overall trajectory is incredibly simple, even primal. Forced into a botched gender reassignment surgery in order to escape a divided Berlin with her American lover, she is left with a mound of flesh instead of a vagina, the “angry inch” of the title. Deserted by terrible men – including a wannabe teenage rock star, Tommy Gnosis, who steals her songs and becomes a success – she eventually marries a Croatian Jewish drag queen, Yitzhak (Adam Noviello), with whom she has a toxic co-dependency. She’s only agreed to marry him if he swears never to dress in feminine clothing again.
The musical takes place during one of Hedwig’s gigs, with Gnosis performing in a stadium down the road – in a clever touch, Gnosis’s songs of self-realisation can be heard intermittently through a door in the set. Hedwig’s torment over this betrayal is curiously mirrored in her abuse of Yitzhak, her denial of his identity and suppression of his talent. Of course, resentment and jealousy will have their repercussions and by the end of the show Yitzhak’s vocal virtuosity spectacularly emerges.
Co-directors Shane Anthony and Dino Dimitriadis expertly finesse Hedwig’s story, extracting huge reserves of humour and pathos, allowing for odd discursions while driving the narrative to its feverish finale. Jeremy Allen’s set and Geoff Cobham’s lighting are brilliantly evocative of the nightclub and the runway, and Nicol and Ford’s costumes, with their denim-on-demin maximalism, are glamorous and subterranean.
Enormous attention is paid in this production to aesthetics, an awareness of the power of possessions to articulate an inner life. The audience enters the outdoor foyer to discover the gorgeously detailed paraphernalia of Hedwig’s world – girlyboy slips hanging from clothes lines, booths lined with formica, a caravan full of exquisitely curated tat – in a reminder of what is acquired and must be sacrificed in the pursuit of self.
Moore proved their star wattage in the recent Australian tour of Miss Saigon, queering the role of the Engineer to stunning effect. As Hedwig, they leap out of the starting gates with explosive energy and charm, milking the hilarious monologues for all they’re worth while allowing flashes of pain and wretchedness. Moore’s vocal range is impressive, their vibrato thumping through their lower register while a prog-rock hysteria animates the top notes. It’s a masterful portrait of pugnacious vulnerability, the queer sensibility writ large.
As the castigated sidekick who finds their voice, Noviello is a revelation. Surly, combative and desperately sad, Yitzhak is Hedwig’s “thing of darkness”. Noviello has a pure, golden tenor that is constantly arrested by Hedwig’s self-regard, but when they emerge from captivity – triumphant in full drag glory– it’s like a burst dam that washes over the hungry audience.
Hedwig and the Angry Inch wears its influences on its sleeve as proudly as its heart. Trask’s terrific songs draw heavily on Bowie and Lou Reed, those great pioneers of gender play, and oscillate between progressive and punk rock. There is a distinctly European sensibility animating the show, and yet this production manages to feel genuinely Australian, too. You can hear the echo of Reg Livermore’s Betty Blokk Buster in Moore’s performance, ballsy and confrontational, flirtatious and sincere.
The world needs Hedwig right now, in this precise iteration. Trans defiance is never divorced from its vulnerability to outside aggression, and Moore and Noviello courageously stand proud against rising waves of hate. These extraordinary performers in their infinite variety, aided by a production of great consideration and vitality, define the fight for us. Now all we have to do is join the band.
Hedwig and the Angry Inch plays at Adelaide festival until 15 March before touring to Melbourne and Sydney
