The show is getting to be a wheezy old standard, but Justin Van Pelt, white-dwarfing it every night as the botched-cock lead in Eubank Productions' umpteenth Hedwig & the Angry Inch, wasn't standard at all. No, this was a new standard, one to make future Hedwigs shake in their falsies. As always, Van Pelt had the voice — this time, everything from a Nico monotone to a bruised-up caterwaul — but he also brought the rock-star glory, the punk-glam rage, the heels and fishnets and jumbled-up chic, the blue slashing eyeliner, the blond Abba wig, the layers of glitter and scar tissue, and selves after selves secreted like the shells of mollusks. Then, better still, Van Pelt as Hedwig slowly stripping away of all of this like a Roman candle sputtering its gunpowder until all is used up and charred.
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