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Thursday through Sunday of this past week, if you were in a certain part of RiNo, you may have noticed an unusual number of people strutting around in glittery eyeshadow, fishnet tights, and hair metal wigs. That’s because the current production of Hedwig and the Angry Inch—by Denver’s Give 5 Productions and playing at the Arch (the former Epic Brewing Company Taproom)—is, in equal parts, a glam-rock-inspired party, a celebration of and for the queer community and allies, and incredibly high quality local musical theater.
“I’m drawn to compelling and challenging work, and Hedwig is notoriously controversial. It’s a bold piece of art,” executive producer Julia Tobey says. “It’s big and loud, and it ruffles feathers, you know? I had a lot of people tell me not to do this show because of how controversial it is—and that’s exactly why we did it.”
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First performed off-Broadway in 1998 (and perhaps most famously revived on Broadway in 2014 with Neil Patrick Harris winning a Tony Award for his starring role), Hedwig and the Angry Inch centers on a genderqueer East German who makes her way to America and becomes a rock ‘n’ roller. The musical is conceived as Hedwig onstage with her band and backup singer Yitzhak—a drag queen from Croatia and Hedwig’s husband—performing glam-rock-inspired numbers and telling Hedwig’s life story.
Jump Ahead: 5 Tips for Doing Hedwig and the Angry Inch the Best Way
After a former lover steals her songs and becomes famous, Hedwig is forced to play grimy dive bars, which is why Tobey was drawn to her production’s initial venue: now-defunct Herman’s Hideaway on South Broadway. “Originally, because of budget and because of vision and artistic direction, we were like, ‘Let’s play this in a seedy, sticky-floor, gross rock club,’ ” Tobey says. Then she, like many other acts who’d been long booked at Herman’s, found out less than a month before opening night (August 1) that the iconic bar had been given over to a Latin dance club called Coco Bongo’s.
The show went on, however, thanks to the theater community rallying around Tobey and Hedwig. Donations poured in, and Tobey was able to secure the Arch, one of Non Plus Ultra’s handful of Denver venues, within a matter of weeks. The production in the space before Tobey, a cabaret called Whiskey Dynamite, offered to rent her its lights and chairs.
“The Hedwig story, to me, is so deeply poetic and gorgeous,” Tobey says. “People kind of write it off as a dude in a wig and a rock musical. It’s so much more than that. It has to do with these blurred gender lines, and at the time that it was written in the late ’90s, it was really revolutionary. And I think today it’s revolutionary in a totally different way.”
Beyond securing a ticket (from $33) ASAP for one of the remaining performances—nightly, August 8 to 11; August 15 to 17; August 19; and August 23 to 24—here are our top five tips for having the best time at this rollicking, raw, and rare production.
5 Tips for Doing Hedwig and the Angry Inch the Best Way
1. Persuade your crew to dress up.
Whether or not you want to compete in the pre-show costume contest (see “Get there early”), Give 5 Productions’ invitation to embrace the glam-rock aesthetic is worth accepting. Sequins, animal prints, tight pants, David Bowie–esque androgyny, bold eyeshadow and liner, big hair—anything that makes you feel like a rock star is appropriate.
“I want people to feel like there’s no limitation on the dress code,” Tobey says. “Just express yourself to your highest degree. Be inspired by ’80s glam rock. Be inspired by East Berlin rocker punk vibes. But like, just go to town.” That said, if you’re most comfortable in jeans and a T-shirt or a sundress, you’ll still fit in: At opening night, audience members were wearing everything from full drag to whatever they had on at the office that day.
2. Get there early.
The hourlong pre-show is an essential—not to mention interactive and riotously fun—part of the experience of this production. Between rotating performances by local drag queens, burlesque dancers, and circus artists, Denver drag queen extraordinaire Jessica L’Whor raffles off prizes (get tickets on-site via cash or Venmo payment) such as Meow Wolf tickets and restaurant gift cards. She also hosts a costume contest in which the winner is chosen by audience enthusiasm.
Says Tobey: “I had a lot of people, even in the Colorado theater community, say, ‘You shouldn’t be doing this piece of work at all, especially as a cisgender woman.’ So, I wanted to engage the queer community.” In addition to being an excellent producer, communicator, and organizer, Tobey says L’Whor is tapped into who is doing relevant work in the sphere she wanted to showcase.
“The Colorado theater community and the drag variety world have some crossover, but I wanted to blur those lines a lot more,” Tobey says. “A lot of these people are getting to know each other.” Much of that mingling is happening around nightly food trucks parked outside the venue and in line for the Arch’s bar, which is serving conversation-starting, Hedwig-specific cocktails such as the Midnight Radio, whose gin, Cointreau, simple syrup, and lemon juice blend is garnished with gummy bears.
3. Listen for Denver references.
Unlike most Broadway scripts, which don’t allow for many (or any) word changes, Hedwig is legally structured to be flexible. “It changes based on where you are in the world and what’s happening in current events,” Tobey says. “And it’s up to the actor and the team to figure that out.”
The night we went, that meant the insertion of jokes about classic Mile High City characters (Jared Polis and Frank Azar) and locales (Coors Field and Casa Bonita). Clark Destin Jones, the actor playing Hedwig, even worked in a dig on Coco Bongo’s.
4. Be ready for Clark Destin Jones to call you out.
Speaking of Jones: Beyond delivering a remarkable performance that’s simultaneously swaggering and shatteringly vulnerable, the actor uses his improv background to engage the crowd—on opening night, bumming a cigarette and chastising an audience member for checking their cell phone.
Over decades of casting, Tobey says she’s only once before had someone transform the energy of an audition room like Jones. “He was being very funny, and he was improvising, and I was crying, because I was like, ‘This is a genius standing before us,’ ” Tobey says. “He solves a very big problem for us, which is, who will play Hedwig?”
Although the tight, sullen four-piece band is critical to the success of the production and Yitzhak provides comic relief in addition to soaring, ethereal backup vocals, Hedwig is literally in the spotlight almost the entire show and has nearly all the lines, spoken and sung. “I’ve never seen a young person so comfortable in stillness. For an actor to stand in silence on stage takes a lot of courage,” Tobey says. “But he understands that nuance.”
5. Bring tissues.
Yes, the show starts with raucous guitar riffs and bawdy humor, but Hedwig’s journey to find herself and understand her place in the world is moving and, at times, tragic. It’s also hard not to see the themes in light of the current political climate around gender identity issues. “The genderqueer existence right now is in danger,” Tobey says. “There are life-threatening things happening every day to this community.”
Tobey hopes that her production of Hedwig not only serves as a safe and celebratory space for members of Denver’s LGBTQ+ community but also invites everyone in the room to open their minds and hearts. “We produce theater, and this piece specifically, because we hope that audience members leave changed,” Tobey says. “They walk in the door a certain way, and they walk out the door another way. And that doesn’t mean for better or worse. It just means, can we make people look at things a little differently?”
Get tickets, from $32.78 for general admission seating to $220 for a four-person VIP table, through Eventbrite. Remaining shows run nightly Thursday, August 8, through Sunday, August 11; Thursday, August 15, through Saturday, August 17; Monday, August 19; and Friday, August 23, to Saturday, August 24.
