Review: HEDWIG AND THE ANGRY INCH Absolutely Rocks at City Theatre

City Theatre has been associated with new theatre for the vast majority of its run, but now they're trying the newest thing yet: a revival. The last time they staged Hedwig, it was in their own space, and starred RENT alum Anthony Rapp. This time, they've moved downtown to the Greer Cabaret, and the coveted role of Hedwig herself is played by a Pittsburgh treasure... Treasure Treasure. But wait, there's more- in the wake of the film version and Broadway revival, the role of Hedwig's partner Yitzhak has been slightly enlarged, creating a star vehicle for yet another of Pittsburgh's most beloved character actors, Theo Allyn. These two performers onstage, fearless, energetic and proudly, defiantly queer, make magic- and also make legitimate rock and roll.

John Cameron Mitchell's text (or at least blueprint on which Hedwig and Yitzhak are to improvise and extemporise) is notoriously byzantine and abstract, as are Stephen Trask's lyrics: they are full of literary and pop cultural allusions, double meanings, wordplay and Burroughsian cut-up abstraction in the David Bowie model. The plot, to the extent that it can be formally understood, is this: Hedwig (Treasure), formerly Hansel, was a gay boy in Cold War Berlin, who was coerced into a sex change in order to marry and flee east Berlin. The surgery was botched and the marriage fell apart, leaving Hansel- now Hedwig- with neither a gender, a partner, nor an easily codified or identifiable sexual organ. Hedwig falls into a malaise of dead-end jobs, sex work and garage bands, until falling head-over-heels for a wannabe rocker with spiritual leanings, who she rechristens Tommy Gnosis. What happens after that is... complicated. Feel free to discuss the ending after the show.

Hedwig is a complicated figure, empowered but victimized at once, and as much the villain as any conventional hero or antihero. Treasure Treasure embodies both Hedwig's glam rock postures and genuinely nasty side with aplomb. "If I don't laugh, I will cry," she says, mining bone-dry humor for moments of sympathy... then turns around and makes shockingly anti-Semitic jokes to her pseudo-husband Yitzhak, with whom she shares a marriage of equal parts convenience and sadomasochistic domination. Theo Allyn, so associated with comedy in the Pittsburgh scene, gets a rare opportunity here to go for pathos and drama as well, embodying the one-time drag rock superstar who has been emotionally castrated by Hedwig but cannot find a way to leave her. Don't worry, comedy fans, you will get PLENTY of Allyn's patented brand of darkly absurdist humor amidst the emotional drama. It's also worth nothing that both these performers self-identify as gender diverse, which adds an additional ring of truth and lived experience to this musical about the ever-shifting world of gender identity and self-definition. 

Director Robert Ramirez follows in the grand tradition of Hedwig productions by setting it right here, right now, massaging the text and its internal logic to make that work. And work it does: Hedwig is performing her show at the Greer Cabaret while ex-lover turned rival Tommy Gnosis can be heard across the river doing his much more successful stadium tour. When an onstage "stage door" is opened, Britton Mauk's scenic design and Zachary Beattie-Brown's sound design mesh with Scott Andrew's multimedia to create the familiar sound of hyper-amplified stadium rock from a bridge away. It's worth mentioning also that Treasure Treasure also plays Tommy Gnosis in audiovisual clips; rather than the Beck-meets-Marilyn-Manson figure the role has traditionally been, Treasure and company visualize Gnosis as a more contemporary white-trash rebel figure, clearly reinventing himself for a mainstream right-wing audience the way Kid Rock, Jellyroll and Post Malone have done. This is one of many clever tweaks that make the material timely, even as that strains the Cold War timeline; when describing childhood in the eighties, the clearly-younger-than-Hedwig Treasure quips "cryogenics, you know."

Hedwig is a challenging show for audiences as well as actors, and I don't just mean the no-easy-answers exploration of gender that sidestep most conventional discussion of trans identity. It's chock-full of literary and philosophical references, historical allusions and intentionally tasteless humor (though this current edition has cut a bit of racial humor that didn't age well). Hedwig is not as palatable and broad-strokes as Rocky Horror; you may have to be a certain type of person to really get into it. (For example, when demonstrating the difference between hard rock attitude and punk attitude, Hedwig first pantomimes spitting beer at someone, then pantomimes drinking and choking to death on her own vomit. "The difference is the direction of the aggression," she deadpans after.) But no matter what you come to the show with in terms of baggage, education or sexual politics, the last ten minutes of the show will raise you to a higher state of consciousness... and no, I won't describe them. I won't even tell you what I think happens... your interpretation is yours, and mine is mine. I'll see you on the other side.

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Hedwig and the Angry Inch

5/2 - 6/7/2026

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