'Hedwig And The Angry Inch' Review: Neil Patrick Harris Shines

Seeing a television star performing on a Broadway stage always brings out feelings wonder and amusement in me. So when I found myself captivated and enthralled from watching Neil Patrick Harris in Hedwig and the Angry Inch, I was more than pleasantly surprised. Bespangled in drag, Harris totally eclipsed the preconceived image of him from How I Met Your Mother, in which he played a completely hetero-normative male who wore a suit 24/7. In this appearance, Harris takes over the stage as Hedwig, the transsexual personality who opens the show with a defiant "Tear me down." "I’m the new Berlin Wall, try and tear me down!" – lines that set the appropriate tone for the rest of the show.

With a set design by Julian Crouch, the stage is seen tattered from the broken walls, buildings in ruins, and burned cars. It felt like I was at some sort of glam rock concert with exhilarating psychosexual themes (definitely my cup of tea). But before we get to all that, we're subject to a bit of exposition through Harris' raunchy storytelling skills. We're caught up to speed about the botched sex change operation, Hedwig’s deprived boyhood in Berlin, the husband who abandoned her in a trailer park in Kansas, and other interesting life stories, all told through the power of rocky show tunes in the spirit of Lou Reed and David Bowie. All of these performances are wonderfully executed on Harris' part, giving the show a dazzling presence and rocking vibes. TV actor or not, Neil Patrick Harris gives one hell of a performance.