Closing out their 51st season, City Theatre Company has produced a revival that is messy, hilarious, strange and loud. It is aso very much the show that we need right now.
The company first staged “Hedwig and the Angry Inch” in 2003 with the amazing Anthony Rapp in the titular role, just five years after its Off-Broadway debut and two years after its film version was released. This season, they partnered with the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust to bring “Hedwig” to the Greer Cabaret Theater stage in Downtown Pittsburgh.
After more than two decades, the musical — with a book by John Cameron Mitchell, as well as music and lyrics by Stephen Trask — is more relevant than ever. It’s set up like a concert, with main character Hedwig Robinson (Treasure Treasure) performing and speaking to the audience. Through about an hour and a half runtime, Hedwig tells the story of her life. The genderqueer child of Cold War-era East Berlin has just gone through a scandal with big-name rock star Tommy Gnosis who is performing as part of his comeback tour simultaneously “at Acrisure Stadium.” She is playing to her much smaller room, trying to reconcile the in-betweenness of her upbringing, her identity and her journey.
Accompanied by her husband, ex-drag queen Yitzhak (Theo Allyn), Hedwig dresses in clothes and sings music inspired by glam rock and punk. The songs are played by an onstage band led by music director Ben Brosche (who also does a phenomenal job on piano) and range from massive rockers to heart-rending ballads. Both Treasure and Allyn sing lead at different points in the show, and both have powerful and breathtaking voices.
Treasure’s Hedwig is brash, hilarious and a little unhinged, but so, so human. Her journey takes her from her childhood as a boy in East Berlin to a botched sex reassignment surgery and marriage to an American soldier to her divorce not long after moving to the United States. She searches for love and acceptance, hoping to find a soulmate to complete her, and finds solace in writing and performing music — and in a young man named Tommy.
The only thing about Hedwig that fits into a box is her wig. She exists outside of the gender binary, in the line between tragedy and comedy, in the complicated space of true lived experience. Treasure’s performance has a stunning trajectory, from incandescent, unapologetic, hysterically funny performer to an accelerating breakdown as the show tilts towards its conclusion. On the other hand, Allyn seems to come more into the character of Yitzhak as the show goes on, and despite the smaller role, they fill the whole stage with their presence.
The Greer is the perfect venue for a show like “Hedwig and the Angry Inch,” an intimate space set up for a concert-like atmosphere, and Friday night’s opening night audience was just involved enough. Director Robert Ramirez and music supervisor Rick Edinger struck the perfect balance between rock concert and dramatic performance, and Ramirez pulled some striking emotional moments from the actors and staging that hit like a tuck.
Scenic designer Britton Mauk and media designer Scott Andrew managed to evoke settings from Berlin to Kansas and beyond, and lighting designer Andrew David Ostrowski worked magic with mood lighting, from flashy rock concert numbers to strobes that heighten the tension during the show’s climactic scenes.
But the costumes of this show are its best creative signifiers, thanks to brilliant design by Daniele Tyler Mathews. From sequins to undergarments to punk rock looks, the clothing was the best indicator of the stage of life and state of mind of the characters. They revealed the identities that the two performers were presenting to the world, or that were being foisted upon them. And, not the spoil the beautiful ending, that artifice is stripped away, giving the clothing whole new and deeper meaning.
In the program’s Note from Leadership, City Theatre artistic director Clare Drobot and managing director James McNeel wrote, “Hedwig’s story represents a breaking of the Berlin Wall of the gender binary.” It’s a perfect way to express the thesis of this show — especially their production. This show and its performers refuse to be broken down by the expectations of the world around them, despite its many, many attempts. In the face of the hardships its characters face, it is unapologetic, it is wild and it is about the search for love and identity on the margins. And — with a run that goes into June’s upcoming Pride Month — it is a story about queerness that is both important and a joy to watch.
City Theatre Company’s “Hedwig and the Angry Inch,” presented in partnership with the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust, will run through June 7 at the Greer Cabaret Theater in Downtown Pittsburgh. To get tickets, visit trustarts.org.