Brighton is set to get Hed only 13 times when the multi-award winning transgendered rock musical, Headwig and The Angry Inch comes to the 2004 Brighton Fringe Festival. Matt Newbury previews the cult stage and film classic for people who feel like life has only given them an inch - when they deserve a mile.
Headwig is the story of an internationally ignored ‘song stylist’ Hedwig Schmidt, an East German rock’n’ roll goddess who also happens to be the victim of a botched sex-change operation - which means she's been left with one angry inch of flesh.
A combination of stand up comedy and rock gig (it's backed by the hard rocking band The Angry Inch), the show made a star of John Cameron Mitchell. A man who not only wrote and performed in the original 1998 stage production, but also fronted, directed, and adpated the 1999 movie - a film that won him the best directors award at the Sundance Film Festival.
The story begins in the former East Berlin where Hedwig, then called Hansel, meets an American GI called Luther who promises to take the young man back to the states if he agrees to have a sex change operation. After the bungled operation, Luther abandons the newly named Hedwig in a Kansas trailer park. Once here she turns to music and meets the nerdy Tommy Speck. It isn't long before she's taken him under her wing and fallen for his simple charms.
But love isn't easy and heartbreak once again visits Hedwig when Tommy steals her songs and achieves rock god fame - while she finds herself cast aside. Having balls, she decides to demand redress and stalks Tommy’s world tour performing in small venues situated next to his stadiums, explaining her quest for the origins of love and our other half.
The story is based loosely on Aristophane’s speech in Plato’s Symposium and the theory that we are just halves of our original wholes - which were either girl / boy, girl / girl, or boy / boy. We were bisected by Zeus as a punishment for pride, and love is the desire and pursuit of the whole and a way of uniting ourselves with the lost half, irrespective of what sex they may be.
The story is outrageous, touching and unexpectedly hilarious, giving it the same cult appeal as The Rocky Horror Show along with its very own obsessive fan base, the aptly named Hedheads. But anyone who has not yet seen a production will love the rocking ride, finding it funny, emotionally draining but with some great, kick-ass numbers. You go girl!
Headwig and The Angry Inch
Brighton Helm Community Centre
North Road, Brighton
Tickets aavailable from the Brighton Dome box office: 01273 709709
1-15 May 2004 at 8pm (preview on 30 April 2004)
The production will also be visiting the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in August.
Buy the DVD of Hedwig And The Angry Inch online and save money.
Buy the CD soundrack of `Hedwig And The Angry Inch` online and save money.