Festival review: Hedwig and the Angry Inch
Seann Miley Moore is lightning in a bottle-blonde wig in a sweaty, barnstorming production of John Cameron Mitchell and Stephen Trask’s cult classic.
A few songs into this opening night performance, Seann Miley Moore launches into an interlude of owl noises — a concession, they say, to any Harry Potter fans in the audience who misread the Adelaide Festival program. Another recurring joke about J.K. Rowling being in the audience is a reminder that 2025 is a long way from the 1990s, when John Cameron Mitchell and Stephen Trask’s musical made its off-Broadway debut.
Four years after a Sydney Festival production led by Hugh Sheridan was canned after a petition raised questions about inclusivity and trans representation, Hedwig makes her Adelaide debut at a time of fierce backlash to such tentative, messy steps towards equality and acceptance. The past week has seen trans rights aggressively rolled back in the United States, while in Australia our own governments face pressure to mount enquiries similar to those launched in the United Kingdom and US.
But as the band starts up, there is something timeless about this show, with one foot in Cold War era repression, another in the sweaty liberation of the 90s drag scene and grunge movements, with musical DNA scooped from the primordial ooze of 1970s glam rock and Americana.
More rock gig than stage show, Hedwig and her denim-clad band meet us not in Queen’s Theatre — Adelaide’s oldest and sweatiest festival venue — but a dive bar in middle America, while her ex and onetime muse Tommy Gnosis plays an arena show across the river. The Angry Inch perform on a circular platform backed by stairs and an elevated platform, a minimal set-up that still gives star Seann Miley Moore plenty to play with.
For all the casting furore of past productions, Moore is an inspired choice, a ‘Slayzian showgirl’ and reality TV show alumnus with a powerful voice and presence.
They perfectly embody Hedwig’s combustible blend of masculinity and femininity, kissing their biceps one moment, strutting lithely across the stage the next, working the crowd and scenery like Iggy Pop before crumbling in a mascara-smeared heap. Throughout the night audience members are enlisted to daub at the sweat pouring off Moore’s body and assist with costume changes by gingerly tugging a denim skirt.
The Angry Inch’s setlist is a musical recap of Hedwig’s life, beginning as a young boy named Hansel born on the wrong side of the wall in East Berlin, stealing moments of inspiration by sticking his head in the oven with a radio, soaking up the American greats being broadcast from over the wall.
As Moore croons the country ballad ‘Origin of Love’ in a crisp baritone, it recalls the American singer-songwriter Orville Peck — one of many queer artists who have reclaimed and subverted notionally heteronormative genres in the years since Hedwig’s debut.
Brought to the stage by a production stacked with local talent, Moore is backed by a knockout band who bring Trask’s genre-hopping score to life under the direction of Victoria Falconer on keys, accordion and theremin.
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Early highlight ‘Origin of Love’ sets the groundwork for Hansel’s decades-long search for identity, partnership and love, with Berlin’s symbolic split and the distant possibility of reunification taking root in Hansel’s yearning to be made whole.
There are a few false starts.
First, the American soldier Luther, who encounters a twentysomething Hansel sunning themselves amidst the Berlin rubble. Their sweet-toothed seduction gives us another early hit in the roof-raising ‘Sugar Daddy’, but the emancipation Luther offers comes with a price: to leave Berlin, Hansel must leave something behind. Before travelling to America as Luther’s ‘wife’, Hansel must first undergo a botched reassignment surgery to ensure their gender matches their passport — a note that lands with added tension given the news of the past week.
We meet Hedwig again in America, a divorcee in a trailer whose early forays into rock music are supercharged when she babysits a soldier’s kid, whose older sibling, Tommy, she takes under her wing and transforms from teenage misfit to budding rock star (and future ex) Tommy Gnosis.
Tommy might be the one, Hedwig thinks, but of course nothing’s that simple, and perhaps it’s little surprise that throughout the night Hedwig pays forward the cruelty and repression to her current partner and musical foil Yitzhak (Adam Noviello, who more than matches Moore’s pipes and presence in the final stretch). As the saying goes, hurt people hurt people, and as the frequent references to the ‘angry inch’ left behind by the East German surgeon attest, Hedwig’s been hurt more than most.
By the end of the night, tears have been shed, along with layers of clothing, boxes’ worth of glitter, and litres of perspiration. As festival openers go, Hedwig and the Angry Inch is a delightful, defiant choice that refuses to be boxed in after all these years. It’s a much better way to spend a night out than with some boy wizard’s owl.
Hedwig and the Angry Inch continues at Queen’s Theatre until 15 March
Read more 2025 Adelaide Festival coverage here on InReview