Transvestites have been anything but a drag on the musical theater industry. From the first plays that forced men to play the parts of women to La Cage Aux Folles to Cabaret to The Rocky Horror Picture Show to Rent to an innumerable set of other musicals, men dressing as women has proven to be as much a musical theater staple as Barbra Streisand. But never has there been a character of such engaging ambiguity, such enigmatic relatibility, such magnetic charisma as Hedwig in Hedwig and The Angry Inch (presented throughout July on Friday and Saturday nights by The Painted Bride Art Center).
Hedwig is a German emigre trying to make it big as the lead singer of Hedwig and the Angry Inch -- a musical band of androgenous misfits. Sparked by the enormous popularity of her protege/lover Tommy Gnosis, Hedwig delivers an especially purging recollection of her sordid past -- her estranged relationship with her mother, her botched sex change operation and her love affair with famed rock star Gnosis -- during one of the band's performances. Hedwig proves to be the manifestation of a society who refuses to relinquish the archaic constraints of sexuality on one's identity. For this reason, Hedwig is not quite a woman, not quite a man, but Hedwig, the playfully elusive, yet equally candid lead singer. She, He, It... whatever, is most importantly an I.
At the center of The Painted Bride's presentation of Hedwig is David Colbert, a cabaret veteran, who captures the spirit of this tortured songstress with his wry delivery and ruthless honesty. Aside from having an ambidextrous voice -- sliding from a German adolescent to a baratoned American G.I. with impressive ease -- Colbert can no doubt carry a tune.
He proves his musical proficiency in both Hedwig's punk offering "Angry Inch" and it's ballad "Origin of Love." At times words become muddled by his German accent and the accompanying slides are dimmed by the stage lights making the story a little harder to follow, but all is redeemed by the sheer energy of both Colbert, his supporting actress Petra Deluca, as Yitzhak, and the band, God - The Band. These guys undoubtedly rock. Their breadth of musical talent is displayed in each disparate tune.
On the whole, Hedwig and the Angry Inch is -- quite like its titular heroine -- a piece of musical theatre that is not afraid of what it is. It rocks with unbridled temerity and rolls, like a ship at sea during a storm, with quiet resolve.
