In "Hedwig and the Angry Inch," Musical Forum has attempted a difficult, nearly implausible project.
Luckily, this version of the gender-bending rock musical emerges with incredible force and shakes the audience of its disbelief.
At once a beautiful burlesque and a deeply moving platonic love story, John Cameron Mitchell's creation (first a stage show and later an independent movie) comes to life in a cabaret-style show in which the heroine used to be a hero. Hedwig is an East German, transsexual and "internationally ignored" rock star who follows around her former lover, Tommy Gnosis, after the two co-starred in a band, and later in the tabloids. Her world tour gives her a venue not only to showcase her own brand of glam-rock, but to contemplate aloud.
For the show, Musical Forum transformed Production Workshop's downstairs space into a lounge-style venue with a back bar where one can order "The Yitzhak" while listening to Brian Eno and Lou Reed. The T-shaped stage allows Hedwig (Dan Bassichis '06), when she finally appears, to strut straight into the audience as if on her own personal runway, while the members of the Angry Inch - her underemphasized but obviously talented band - lurk in the background.
Onstage, the burden of the show rests on the shoulders of Bassichis' titular heroine; luckily, he carries it off in calf-length boots. Under the expert direction of Emily Drumsta '06, Bassichis builds a raunchy, sexy yet extremely likeable character and tears her down before our eyes.
In the show's opener, Hedwig is all fists and fury, tossing her platinum hair back and jumping up and down furiously. In banter, Hedwig seems awkward at first, but the patient Bassichis lets her pauses take on a gravity of their own. Some jokes may make audiences uncomfortable, but Hedwig is wholly unapologetic; no man or woman in the audience is safe from her rock 'n' roll antics. Meanwhile, the Angry Inch rocks through the show's high-powered, challenging numbers with a surly enthusiasm worthy of any number of "The" bands currently ruling the indie-rock charts. Obviously the show's "rock coach" has taught them well. Even Yitzhak (Aja Nisenson '07), the silent, dark counterpart to Hedwig's light, has her own disinterested lope.
"Hedwig" builds throughout its first half after Bassichis' opening monologue; thus, "Sugar Daddy" is not so saucy, but "Angry Inch" (detailing Hedwig's sex change gone awry) rocks as righteously as it should before "Wig in a Box" knocks the power up to 11. By the end of that number, the audience believes Hedwig's transformation from "East German girly-boy" to sexy, powerful rock goddess.
And then the character eludes us again. When the musical turns to chronicling Hedwig's relationship with Tommy and associated troubles in its second half, Hedwig cannot freely transgress, only suffer - viscerally and at full volume. When forced to shoulder the voice of Tommy opposite Hedwig, Bassichis does not fill Tommy out quite as well; it is adequate, however, within the show's constraint of giving Hedwig the voice of her own object of obsession. Though much quieter in the second half, the Angry Inch is just as capable in its renditions of songs like "The Long Grift"; as it turns out, Nisenson has a strong set of pipes all her own, which she deftly employs to convey Yitzhak's own wounds for a change.
Once again, the burden rests on Bassichis, who relentlessly pushes his own limits in order to achieve a fully rounded portrayal of a complex character. In his best moments, the actor disappears entirely; seeing his Hedwig writhe in the glitter onstage, disbelief melts away in the spotlight. The deeper into the show the audience travels, the more apparent Hedwig becomes, even when stripped of her outer trappings. Bassichis has obviously studied his Mitchell, but he adds to the original a subtlety of his own, a willingness to trust his own silences and act through them. In his hands, Hedwig is more than the sum of her parts; she's not campy, but rather truly heartbroken.
Musical Forum has never shied away from difficult shows (take last year's unfinished Dickensian musical "The Mystery of Edwin Drood"). "Hedwig" is as unapologetic as its heroine; one can either take its conceit, the quest for one's other half refracted through modern pop culture, or leave it. In this case, it's worth taking.
