HEDWIG AND THE ANGRY INCH • Stray Dog Theatre

Stray Dog’s latest production has every bit the vibe of a rock concert when you walk into the theatre. The band, typically secluded somewhere behind the set, is front and center, warming up before the show. Rob Lippert’s scenic design features TV screens and speakers galore. The bar, usually out in the lobby, is in the house on the floor against the stage, with a pair of Stray Dog alums (the night I went) serving as bartenders. So grab a drink and buckle up -- you’re about to be entertained by the song stylings of Hedwig, a genderqueer rock singer from East Germany, and her band, The Angry Inch.

Hedwig (Michael Baird) is in town for a St. Louis engagement, and during her roughly 90-minute show, we’ll hear about her younger years as Hansel Schmidt, her travels, misadventures, heartbreaks and her surgically fucked-up sex change operation that leaves her with, what Hedwig has titled, an “angry inch” -- her band’s namesake. A cheeky, tortured and fiercely funny Baird is in full command of this diva, carrying the titular headliner on his shoulders, holding the audience, and making the most of John Cameron Mitchell’s improvisational book. At times full of cavorting swagger and at other times slowing heartbreak, Baird physically and vocally handles numbers like, "The Origin of Love,” "Wicked Little Town" and “Midnight Radio” assuredly.

HEDWIG AND THE ANGRY INCH • [insert name here] Theatre Company

A musical about a transgender singer from East Berlin?  You bet!  Hedwig became an off-Broadway hit in 1998 after gathering a cult following and ran for two years, inspiring a film released in 2001.  Now Hedwig Schmidt (a magnetic Paul Cereghino), and his band, The Angry Inch, are playing one of their tour stops, which happens to be The Focal Point on Sutton Avenue.

They're playing where they can, following Hedwig's former lover, rock-star Tommy Gnosis around the country, who is on his much more successful tour.  He broke Hedwig's heart and pilfered her music, and she tells us about him and other stories from her life during the set, starting with her days in Berlin as a "slip of a girly boy", then called Hansel.  Her quest to find her soulmate seemed promising after finding love with an American named Luther.  She agrees to marry him and move to Germany, so her mother gives her a passport, her name, and Hedwig gets gender reassignment surgery in order to legally get married.  The operation however, is completely screwed up, and Hedwig is left with an "angry inch".  After facing an uphill battle, struggling to fashion a new sense of self and sexual identity, Luther leaves Hedwig after they'd immigrated to a trailer park in Junction City, Kansas.  Hedwig voices her painful past through humorous self deprecation and one-liners, but also with Stephen Trask's heartfelt, tuneful songs like "Wig in a Box" and "Wicked Little Town".  She's backed up vocally by her current husband, drag-king, Yitzhak (Connie Reinhardt).