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Hedwig and the Angry Inch

Cover to Original Broadway Cast

Music and lyrics by John Cameron Mitchell and Stephen Trask.

The Story

This groundbreaking Obie-winning Off-Broadway smash also won multiple awards for its hit film adaptation. It tells the story of "internationally ignored song stylist" Hedwig Schmidt, a fourth-wall smashing East German rock 'n' roll goddess who also happens to be the victim of a botched sex-change operation, which has left her with just "an angry inch." This outrageous and unexpectedly hilarious story is dazzlingly performed by Hedwig (née Hansel) in the form of a rock gig/stand-up comedy routine backed by the hard-rocking band "The Angry Inch."

Using songs and monologues, Hedwig tells her story, which began in the former East Berlin where as Hansel he meets Luther, an American GI who promises to take the young man to the States on the condition that he switch his sex. After the bungled operation, Luther abandons newly named Hedwig in a Kansas trailer park where she turns to music and meets geeky Tommy Speck, whom she takes under her wing and soon falls for. Tommy steals her songs, achieves rock star fame, and Hedwig is once again cast aside. She decides to demand redress and stalks Tommy's world tour, performing in the T.G.I. Friday's that are situated next door to his stadiums. Hedwig describes her life's search for "The Origin of Love" and her other half. It's a rocking ride, funny, touching and ultimately inspiring to anyone who has felt life gave them an inch when they deserved a mile.

Synopsis

The story is told by Hedwig directly to the audience in the form of an extended monologue. The conceit of the stage production is that the audience are watching the character Hedwig's musical act she follows rockstar Tommy Gnosis's (much more successful) tour around the country. Occasionally Hedwig references Gnosis's concert which is playing in an adjoining venue.

Hedwig's band (including the character of Yitzhak) appears on stage for practically the entire duration of the musical, as does Hedwig herself.

Hedwig tells of Hansel, an East German "slip of a girlyboy" who loves philosophy and rock music, is stuck in East Berlin until he meets Luther Robinson, a U.S. soldier. Luther falls in love with Hansel and the two decide to marry. This plan will allow Hansel to leave communist East Germany for the capitalist West. However, in order to be married, the couple must consist of a man and a woman. Hansel's mother, Hedwig, gives her child her name and passport and finds a doctor to perform a sex change. The operation is botched, however, and her surgically constructed vagina heals closed, leaving Hansel – now Hedwig – with a dysfunctional one-inch mound of flesh between her legs, "with a scar running down it like a sideways grimace on an eyeless face."

Hedwig goes to live in Junction City, Kansas as Luther's wife. On their first wedding anniversary, Luther leaves Hedwig for another man. That same day, it is announced that the Berlin Wall has fallen and Germany will reunite.

Hedwig recovers from the separation by forming a rock band composed of Korean-born Army wives, which she names "The Angry Inch". Hedwig befriends a shy and misunderstood Christian teenager Tommy Speck, with whom she writes some songs. Hedwig gives him the stage name "Tommy Gnosis", but he later leaves her and goes on to become a wildly-successful rock star with the songs Hedwig wrote alone and with him. "Internationally ignored" Hedwig and her Angry Inch are forced to support themselves by playing coffee bars and strip mall dives.

The song "The Origin of Love", based on Aristophanes' speech in Plato's Symposium, explains that human beings were once round, two-headed, four-armed, and four-legged beings. Angry gods split these early humans in two, leaving the separated people with a lifelong yearning for their other half. Hedwig believes that Tommy is her soul mate and that she cannot be whole without him. She feels driven to either reunite with him or destroy him.

Cast

1 man, 1 woman (flexible casting).

Musical Numbers

  1. Tear Me Down
  2. The Origin of Love
  3. Random Number Generation
  4. Sugar Daddy
  5. The Angry Inch
  6. Wig in a Box
  7. Wicked Little Town
  8. The Long Grift
  9. Hedwig's Lament
  10. Exquisite Corpse
  11. Wicked Little Town (Reprise)
  12. Midnight Radio

Instrumentation:

Keyboards, Bass, Guitar, Drums.

Libretto: ISBN: 0-8222-1901-8