Getting ahead in the ‘biz

“Hedwig and the Angry Inch”

Written and Directed by John Cameron Mitchell

“Hedwig and the Angry Inch”

Written and Directed by John Cameron Mitchell

In some unnamed hotel room on the Kansas City leg of the Hedwig world tour, we see a bedroom filled with wigs. They are on shelves, on the bed, on the floor, and all expressing different images and looks.

On the bed in the middle of the deluge of fake hair sits Yitzhak, a scruffy, stubble-faced, bandana-wearing male rocker played by Miriam Shor, a woman. As he sits brushing a wig, he furtively looks around and slips it on his head. He seems happy until suddenly he hears his hermaphrodite wife, Hedwig. Hedwig is played by John Cameron Mitchell. To avoid being caught in drag by his androgynous wife, Yitzhak rips the wig off just as Hedwig enters the room.

This concept of complete disregard and utter obliviousness to the divisions between man and woman is the very core and catalyst for every theme, metaphor and analogy that appear throughout