Meet Hedwig Robinson (John Cameron Mitchell). Born as Hansel in 1961 Berlin to an American GI father and an East German housewife mother, after meeting and falling for American Sergeant Luther Robinson (Mauice Dean Wint), Hansel moves to the US with him and they plan to marry, but of course as they're both male this is impossible. So Hansel goes under the knife to become the female Hedwig, but the operation is botched and leaves her with a dysfunctional one-inch mound of flesh between her legs. She now goes to live in Junction City, Kansas, where after Luther ditches her for a bloke she befriends Tommy Speck (Michael Pitt), a teenager questioning his Christian upbringing. Hedwig takes Tommy under her wing and gives him a crash-course in all things glam rock, giving him his stage name Tommy Gnosis. But after a very compromising incident while he is bathing, Tommy abandons her and becomes a multi-platinum Goth rocker by stealing all her songs. Hedwig is now stuck playing gigs with her backing band in Baltimore when she decides to take them on a road trip to reclaim from Tommy what's hers.
Hedwig and the Angry Inch was originally an Off-Broadway musical Mitchell wrote with composer Stephen Trask (who plays Hedwig's bandmate Skszp), and also like The Rocky Horror Picture Show it bombed at the box office but has attracted a devoted cult following ever since. Seeing why is pretty easy; its explicit content definitely isn't for all ages or tastes, but with its unabashed promotion of hard-living glam rock culture and sympathetic treatment of transgender life it can speak to anybody living on society's fringes. The openly gay Mitchell (who also wrote the adaptation with Trask) directs it vivaciously, injecting the musical scenes with rich but well-judged use of colours and the behind-the-scenes interactions with gentle discretion, and interspersing it all cohesively with animated sequences that are artistically and figuratively unique and thus very fitting. He was even nominated for a Golden Globe for his nicely layered performance and Pitt (in his breakthrough role) suitably makes Tommy a villain whom we don't know who to support or hate.
But best of all here is the soundtrack, adapted from the stage show. The songs range from gleefully perverse to emotional and even wise: The Origin of Love, Angry Inch, In Your Arms Tonight, Exquisite Corpse and my favourite, Wig in a Box, to name but a few. There are also heaps of laughs here (you'll particularly know why shouldn't put a bra in a dryer). Even for a cisgender male like me who generally hates musicals, Hedwig and the Angry Inch is a delightfully camp knockout.
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