Adelaide Festival Theatre
22 June, 2018

To borrow his own categorisation, John Cameron Mitchell is a “middling” cultural icon. His 2004 independent film Shortbus was fresh and sexy and a critical and popular success. However, it was his rock musical Hedwig and the Angry Inch about the transformative journey to self-awareness and identity of the title character peppered with songs that would have fitted perfectly on albums of David Bowie, Lou Reed or Iggy Pop that became a “middling smash” and brought Mitchell a cult following of fans who identified with Hedwig’s struggle through many cocoons to the perfect butterfly.

I haven’t seen the musical and I was concerned that my lack of knowledge might hamper me in my appreciation of this concert of mostly Hedwig tunes. However, I had nothing to fear as Mitchell interposed the songs with ample background on the story and characters, as well as a host of stories from his own life revealing the parallels between his journey and that of his creation. The musical score is superb. Sure, Mitchell’s reverence for Bowie, Reed and Iggy is evident in tracks like The Origin of Love, Sugar Daddy, Wicked Little Town and The Long Grift, but the...