<b>HEDWIG AND THE ANGRY INCH</b> Shea's Smith Theatre/Second Generation Theatre SpeakupWNY | Buffalo NY and Buffalo News

Through May 18
HEDWIG AND THE ANGRY INCH Shea�s Smith Theatre/Second Generation Theatre

By Augustine Warner

�Hedwig and the Angry Inch� remains a narrowly popular cult story, getting a strong production from Second Generation Theatre.
The story and dark production will remind you of another cult tale, �The Rocky Horror Picture Show,� more a show aimed at a narrow slice of the theater audience which can obsess on every tiny piece of the production rather than just be wildly entertained.
The plot is more than a little tangled, surprising for a show with a band and only two characters.
It�s an ideal production for the set David Butler wedged into the Shea�s Smith Theatre, a dark and confined lesser stage for a giant theater housing a successful rock band, Gnosis, performing.
That allows references to the far larger Shea�s Mainstage.
On the Smith stage, it�s the story of Hedwig (Vanna Deux) and her accompanist husband, Yitzhak (Kristopher Bartolomeo), and Tommy Gnosis.
Hedwig wrote Tommy�s most successful songs, before he went to prison for an auto accident which killed people on a school bus.
He was at the wheel, distracted by sex with Hedwig.
During the Opening Night �Hedwig� performance I attended, the Mainstage housed a performance of �The Cher Show,� about as far as possible from the fictional Gnosis.
Hedwig started out as an unhappy East German teen, son of an American soldier who left, obsessed with American music, which is available on an American military radio station.
She hooks up with an American soldier and agrees to a sex change operation to marry the soldier and move from behind the Iron Curtain to a military base in the States.
The operation is botched and the soldier leaves and Hedwig becomes an increasingly unhappy and unstable rock performer.
We see her unraveling on stage, with the unhappy Yitzhak stepping in more and more to keep the show moving, songs like �Hedwig�s Lament�/�Exquisite Corpse,� as Hedwig appears to become Tommy (also Deux) to perform the song she wrote for him, �Wicked Little Town (reprise).�
That leaves Yitzhak to perform the final song, �Midnight Radio,� in a fabulous dress.
The credit for that dress and the show�s wigs, go to Devin Prokop.
The sold-out audience loved it all, clearly filled with those familiar with the material and music.
It is a great show, well-performed by the band, Deux and Bartolomeo and well-directed by Michael Gilbert-Wachowiak, an increasingly familiar name on the local theater scene.
This isn�t routine stage musical material, with two tortured personalities performing aid their tangled backstories and the pounding, well-rehearsed band.
�Hedwig and the Angry Inch� isn�t a standard musical but it is well-done and entertaining for those who have an idea what they are in for.