I'm unsure how to start this post. I feel like most of you (my faithful readers... I think there's a few of you...), are expecting me to flip out about how much I absolutely adored it and how 90-minute rock operas are the way of the future.
You'd be half right. I love me a good 90-minute rock opera, and I do believe they are the way of the future, or at least what gets millennial butts in seats.
The first part though, about expressing absolute unabashed love and adoration for this show? Not so correct. Because honestly? I didn't love it. I barely even liked it. And I am having a really hard time coming to terms with how I felt about the show. I wanted to love it more than anything. How could you not want to love this show? Especially with my track record - I mean, American Idiot is like my second favorite show ever. Hedwig just seems like a show I would want to see over and over again. But I don't.
I've never seen the movie. I went into the show knowing very little about the plot. I knew Hedwig was born a man and that the "angry inch" referred to a botched surgery. That's basically all I knew. As an audience member, when you walk into a theater not knowing specifics about the show you're about to see, you expect to be taken care of, right? Well, in the case of Hedwig, apparently not. I felt abandoned. Lost in a sea of Hedwig super-fans that knew all the words to the songs and all the punch lines to the jokes. I had no idea what was happening, I had no idea what the point of the story was, and I had no idea how I was supposed to be feeling. I was literally lost. To make matters worse, I couldn't understand one word being sung. Literally the only time I understood lyrics to a song was when Whitney Houston was sung by Yitzak.
I'll admit that part of my lack of enthusiasm about the show was my complete lack of knowledge. But that shouldn't be a make or break kind of thing. I've seen plenty of shows I didn't know the plot to beforehand, and walked away being able to discuss the plot. With Hedwig, I literally knew one plot detail after the show, and that's the thing I already knew before walking into the theater!
I'm glad I got to see John Cameron Mitchell because Hedwig is his baby. He was a great performer. I thoroughly enjoyed watching him navigate his way around the stage with a leg brace. He's adorable, and you would never know he's getting up there in age from his body.
The real star of the show to me was Lena Hall as Yitzak. For the first half of the show I was like "why the heck did she win a Tony for this... all she's doing is sitting and looking sad." Then the Whitney Houston moment happened and I was like "oh hot damn" because she can sing. Not that I was surprised she could sing, I'd seen her onstage before and, while not totally memorable in Kinky Boots, she sang pretty. So basically I had no idea what the heck was happening, but I was mesmerized by Lena Hall. And then she came out dressed as a woman in the end and I was even more confused (which honestly I didn't think was possible at that point), and sang her face off.
Production wise, the show was amazing. The lights? Unreal. Sound? Unreal. Usually when I can't understand the lyrics, I blame it on the sound guy, but here I think it's just a fault of the music and the style. It was a lot of screaming and a lot of slurred words - I think the point was to sound sexy? If so it was unsuccessful in my opinion.
I don't remember being warned about strobe lights, and holy shit they were intense. So there's another instance of not taking care of your audience. How about an insert in the Playbill to warn us that there's a long sequence of strobe lights? I don't know. At this point it doesn't even matter because it's selling well, the show won a crap ton of awards, and John Cameron Mitchell will always be beloved.
I know I'm supposed to feel something. There's some emotion that's supposed to be evoked by this show. But it didn't do it for me. I get more choked up just listening to the soundtrack of American Idiot than I did watching the ending of Hedwig.
I tend to have unpopular opinions on shows, so I guess I shouldn't be all that surprised.
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