By SHARON EBERSON
The raw and raunchy, punk-glam, title role in Hedwig and the Angry Inch and Pittsburgh’s Treasure Treasure are a match so obviously made for each other, sparks fly from the moment she makes her entrance in, of all places, the posh Greer Cabaret. Not to worry. The stage is properly set for City Theatre’s first-ever venture into the Downtown Cultural District.
Treasure — in every sense of the word — comes at you in waves of grandiosity, introspection, and a stiletto-sharp wit that are a countdown to rage against the angry inch that has shaped her world. The multitalented artist breathes new life into a character that tore up the envelope that others were merely pushing in the 1990s, and had a Broadway rebirth in the 2010s.
For City Theatre, 2026 marks a first-ever revival, with the return of Hedwig to its lineup, after Rent’s Anthony Rapp led a 2003 production on the South Side.
Before opening night of Hedwig at the Greer, reps of City and the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust heralded their partnership in presenting the production, with Managing Director James McNeel revealing that ticket sales for Hedwig, the finale of City’s 51st season, had already surpassed the ticket sales record established earlier in the season by Lauren Gunderson’s Little Women.
From Little Women to Hedwig … As mother-daughter stories go, well, something for everyone, indeed.
Treasure leads a nearly all-local team, with Theo Allyn as Hedwig’s subservient husband, Yitzhak, directed by Robert Ramirez, the head of the Carnegie Mellon School of Drama, with Rick Edinger of CMU as music supervisor.
The set by Britton Mauk and lighting by Andrew David Ostrowski provide the glow-down from the nightclub atmosphere of the Greer to the dingy dive bar that is par for Hedwig’s concert venues — a far cry from her dashed dreams of rock stardom, and the partners who walked away.
Stephen Trask’s rock ’n’ roll songs, mashed with elements of country, punk and pop, have rarely been left in such good hands. Treasure’s outrageous Hedwig enjoys the backing of Allyn’s vocals and a kick-ass onstage band, led by Ben Brosche, and projections by Scott Andrew (a one-two punch after PMT’s Dear Evan Hansen) that are arena-concert worthy.
The song “The Origins of Love” is introduced by Hedwig as a bedtime story told by her mother, as they lay on their pallet in a squalid space. Their lives had been upended when they found themselves on the East German side of the Berlin Wall, and mom was tasked with “teaching sculpting to the limbless.”
There are a lot of jokes like that. Your sense of humor will be both tickled and challenged, and you likely wukk be offended on more than one occasion. If so, Hedwig has done its job.
But back to “The Origins of Love.”
A tale as old as time; it starts, “When the earth was still flat / And clouds made of fire … It is a song that doesn’t get enough attention when talking about the best of Broadway (I hereby continue a long-standing debate: Why is there no Best Song category among the Tony Awards?)
Treasure delivers “Origins” with all the grit and soul and desire I could hope for, with explosions of cells serving as a bio-cosmic backdrop.
As the subservient Yitzhak, a former successful drag queen in Croatia, Allyn is unrecognizable from their hysterical turn in City’s POTUS. They remain mostly in the background, singing backup and doing Hedwig’s bidding. Together, Hedwig and Yitzhak came to the United States after Hedwig suffered a series of heartbreaking setbacks — a botched sex-change operation the defining one — and Yitzhak has remained under Hedwig’s thumb, with the threat of ICE coming for them.
There are other in-the-here-and-now references, beginning with references to lost love Tommy Gnosis, Hedwig’s mentee and lover. Tommy left her behind under horrific, degrading circumstances, and went on to become a stadium rocker, using Hedwig’s material.
From the tawdry venue where failed rocker Hedwig is playing a set, she can open a door and hear the thousands cheering Tommy at Acrisure (“Are you sure?”) Stadium. To appease the Pittsburgh audience, she refers to “Heinz Field,” and waves a Terrible Towel.
Throw in a Harry Styles here, and the “annoying” Strip District and its Terminal there, and there’s a sense that we are in 2026.
Judging time by the fall of the Berlin Wall that would make Hedwig’s age about … Never mind, a lady should never reveal her age.
Anyway, Hedwig is timeless.
John Cameron Mitchell’s creation grew out of drag queen culture and his experiences growing up on military bases in Germany. The show found a theater in Lower Manhattan in 1998, where it ran for two years, and was made into a movie, starring and directed by Mitchell, in 2001. It didn’t hit Broadway until 2014, when Neil Patrick Harris shed any remaining Doogie Howser dust from his shoulders and won a Tony in the title role.
When the show toured here in 2017, with Euan Morton in the title role, his Hedwig began with a demeaning diatribe that I found off-putting as a start.
Not so for Treasure’s Hedwig, who loves “a warm hand at my entrance,” and welcomes one and all to the Greer, er, “queer cabaret,” for her “unlimited Pittsburgh run.”
Her Hedwig is bitingly funny and heartwrenching, who as a kid had to put her head in an oven to listen to a radio and enjoy “American Masters,” such as the Captain and Tenille. Later, she learns the joys of the geographic rock bands: Boston, Kansas, America, Asia, etc.
Trask’s songs reflect an eclectic roll call of 1980s music and culture, with “Wig in a Box” perhaps the best known, and including a reference to 8-track tape and “Miss Farrah Fawcett from TV.”
Outfits and wigs worn by Treasure (drag artist Daniele Tyler Matthews is the costume designer) reflect Hedwig’s meager means — or is it her tawdry taste? — while Allyn is tricked out in leather and a mean pompadour.
Hedwig’s treatment of Yitzhak, based in a desperate need to be beloved, if not loved, and requiring constant demonstrations of loyalty, represent their journey as a couple.
Hedwig could be one of the saddest sad stories ever told, about a trans woman born on the wrong side of the Berlin Wall, finding love and losing it in the most degrading ways, and aspiring to something that will never be within her grasp.
The superpower that propels Hedwig and the Angry Inch is the canny, wickedly twisted path toward self-awareness, as “an internationally ignored song stylist,” wrapped in a rock concert.
To this point, Treasure’s performance as Hamlet, for Quantum Theatre, was a front-runner as a favorite, but Hedwig may have crossed the finish line just ahead.
Hedwig and Treasure were made for each other.
TICKETS AND DETAILS
Hedwig and the Angry Inch, presented by City Theatre in partnership with the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust, is at the Greer Cabaret, Downtown, through June 7, 2026. Tickets: https://citytheatrecompany.org/production/100838/hedwig-and-the-angry-inch or call 412-431-2489.
Categories: Arts and Ideas
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