Reviewer: Daniel Shipman
Upstaged Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
The first thing you need to know about Hedwig and the Angry Inch is that I’ve already booked to see it again.
The second thing you need to know is that Hedwig is the role Divina de Campo was born to play. Capturing the nuance of the part perfectly – you don’t want to be friends with Hedwig, but you also never want to leave her company.
Hedwig is the role Divina de Campo was born to play.
The show takes the form of a gig performed by Hedwig in a rundown club as she relates her life story to the audience. We’re taken from a neglected childhood in East Berlin, via botched surgery, military liaisons and the reinvention of a young prodigy who steals Hedwig’s songs and uses them to launch himself to superstardom.
Under Jamie Fletcher’s direction, this production leans into the dark humour which underpins John Cameron Mitchell’s text. It flits from genuine belly laughs to devastating pathos with a deceptive lightness of touch. As Hedwig’s husband Yitzhak, Elijah Ferreira provides the perfect foil to Divina’s Hedwig – browbeaten and abused but ultimately defiant.
The costumes (Ben Stones, who also designed the set) are suitably outrageous and provide many of the finest comic moments in the show. Divina emerges on the stage brandishing a denim American flag with the statement ‘gender is a construct’ – it works as a summary mission statement for the entire show.
‘Gender is a construct’ – works as a summary mission statement for the entire show.
Similarly, the video design (Daniel Denton) serves to immerse the audience in Hedwig’s internal world writ large, taking the thoughts expressed in these iconic songs and splashing them across the stage.
By the closing number, on the night I attended, the audience are in full rapture – hands aloft and entirely at the mercy of Hedwig’s tragi-comic life story. I’d challenge anyone to be able to come to this show and not find themselves in the same blissful state by the end of it.
-Daniel Shipman
Hedwig and the Angry Inch runs at HOME Manchester until Wednesday 11 May 2022.