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On Valentine's day, 1998, Hedwig and the Angry Inch opened off-Broadway to rave reviews and the phenomenon that is Hedwig was born. In the summer of 2001, John Cameron Mitchell and Stephen Trask's brilliant film adaptation was released to equally glowing reviews. "If the glam-rock era is long gone, Hedwig reminds us, its subversive spirit, which has percolated under the surface of rock culture for more than two decades, lives on," wrote Stephen Holden in The New York Times.

Inspired by Plato's Symposium, Hedwig tells the story of "internationally ignored song stylist" Hedwig Schmidt, the victim of a gruesomely botched sex-change operation, and is dazzlingly recounted by Hedwig (née Hansel) in the form of a sleazy lounge act, and backed by the rocking band, The Angry Inch. Innovative, inspired, and oddly endearing, Hedwig is a spectacular love story that has been "knocking the socks off New York theater-goers with a much-needed jolt of twisted bathos and wigged-out histrionics." (The Advocate)

"Hedwig brings theater alive with the pounding sounds of rock and the funny-sad voicing of a painful past." (The New York Times)

"In the whole long, sorry history of rock musicals, Hedwig and the Angry Inch is the first one that truly rocks." (Rolling Stone) [via]