Part of the reason for this is that Hedwig -- like Rocky Horror's Dr. Frank-N-Furter, with whom he's reflexively (and in some ways too glibly) compared -- functions on both stage and screen less as an actual transgender than as an all-purpose metaphor for self-realization. If this tranny-with-a-'tude can make it -- the show seems to say -- then so can you. Embodying self-realization on a professional level, Mitchell, in bringing Hedwig to life, has performed the sort of multimedia hat trick that few have ever attempted, much less brought off successfully. And making his success all the more striking is that this writer-performer -- who first came to light playing Larry Kramer as a child in the latter man's autobiodrama, The Destiny of Me -- would be the one to do so. Short and delicate looking, he'd appear to have a career along the well-trod lines of Anthony Perkins, Richard Thomas, or Dennis Christopher. You know, the "sensitive" (that is, neurotic) type.
Hedwig explodes all of that. Hansel (as the lead character is initially named), the little East German "girly boy" who grows up listening to rock on Armed Forces Radio and falls in love with a black GI who insists that Hansel get a sex change to come to America, may sound at first like a victim (or better still, a retread of Elvira, the similarly unstrung transsexual hero-heroine of Fassbinder's In a Year of 13 Moons) but not as Mitchell works Hedwig out.
To begin with, Hedwig is one tough cookie. Going from an East Berlin apartment to a trailer park in Kansas is culture shock enough. Transgenderism would appear only to complicate the situation. But not for Hedwig. Though the operation was botched (hence the "angry inch" of genitalia), her spirits aren't. Likewise she takes getting dumped by her GI lover in stride, facing the world with the sort of determination not seen since Joan Crawford in Flamingo Road. Making ends meet through baby-sitting jobs, Hedwig meets her next l'amour fou, Tommy Gnosis (the marvelously spacey Michael Pitt). This time the betrayal cuts even deeper as Tommy not only steals Hedwig's heart but (worse still), her songs. Not to be trifled with, Hedwig embarks on a career of her own, a kind of stalking tour, in which she and her band perform adjacent to every one of Tommy's engagements.
Unfortunately Hedwig's manager, Phyliss Stien (the great Andrea Martin), can get her booked only into T.G.I. Friday's restaurants and salad bars (leading to shots of Hedwig and her crew performing for confused-cum-terrified diners that are some of the most hilarious in the entire film). This doesn't faze Hedwig, who has already faced the indignity of being the only performer playing to an audience of one at the "Menses Fair" music festival. But her bass player and boyfriend, Yitzhak (Miriam Shor, in a transvestite performance of considerable wit and grace), is champing at the bit to chuck the whole thing and join the Guam touring company of Rent.
All works out semisatisfactorily for everyone concerned in the end, but not before Mitchell and his merry crew (including Emily Hubley, who supplies some delicious animated cartoon interludes) have had a go at every rock movie from Viva Las Vegas (Ann-Margret has nothing on Hedwig when it comes to stage presence) to This Is Spinal Tap (the take on rock-tour indignities of which it manages to top). Most important of all, Hedwig and the Angry Inch offers an enormous amount of pure silly fun for the entire nonnuclear family, no matter what gender they may be.
