Getting Hed

In a normal world, there’s really nothing entertaining about familial abandonment, blatant artistic theft or grossly disfiguring surgery. But much like a mime being punched in an alley, an unfortunate event, when played correctly, can be incredibly fun to watch.

And anyway, Hedwig & the Angry Inch isn’t set in a normal world. The off-Broadway musical, which begat a subsequent feature film and an obsessive, cultlike following, is such a lewd, campy romp that it’s easy to forget that at its center is some pretty intense human suffering.

Why this world of tragedy, drag queens and catchy tunes hasn’t made its way to a theater town like Houston — especially after being a hit in Austin, San Antonio, Dallas and Fort Worth — remains somewhat of a mystery, especially to Jef Rouner, who’s directing Houston’s first Hedwig at Fitzgerald’s.

“I think it’s absolutely hysterical that nobody else has ever done it in Houston,” he says. “And here we are — not a single one of us has done theater in years, just picking up, putting on a show we love, putting it in a venue where it’s never happened before — I just love that.”

Hedwig is the story of Hansel, a young East Berliner born before the collapse of the Wall. Growing up with a single, inattentive mother, young Hansel discovers his passion for singing. Years later, when the effeminate young man meets a stationed army officer, the two plan to marry. When told he can leave the country only as the soldier’s wife, he agrees to a sex-change operation. The operation is botched, and Hansel is left behind with one inch of manhood (and no womanhood). His new name is Hedwig.

Finding herself abandoned in Kansas by her husband, the transgendered Hedwig scrapes by with odd jobs. At one of them, she meets the boyish Tommy, who eventually screws her as well — emotionally and artistically. But she survives with a newfound glam-rock persona, a band called the Angry Inch and a new husband, Yitzhak, whom she mistreats and manipulates.

“I think a lot of people don’t identify with Hedwig,” says Rouner. “But very few of us have had to give up what Hedwig gave up: love, home, everything you ever dreamed of, and even your genitalia — your very identity, for most of us. That’s the tragedy of it, really.”

But all this tragedy is rife with irony (the lady Hedwig is played by a man, husband Yitzhak by a woman), cheeky monologues and notoriously catchy tunes. Rouner swears the production — especially the venue — will maintain the show’s stage integrity. “I wanted to set it in a rock club,” he says, “where there’s stickers on the wall, vomit on the floor, people crawling around acting like fools, and not necessarily the most professional lighting.”

With any luck, the show will capture the in-your-face rock-opera shtick that made Hedwig a global musical phenomenon. “I want to break the fourth wall completely down,” says Rouner. “That’s my dream. I’m actually hoping that people wander in expecting a concert — and after the first two lines they’re thinking, ‘What the fuck?'”