Hedwig Rocks The Palm
My multi-talented dear friend Deborah Darr, painter, ex-Broadway dancer, singer, and snowbird for three months every year, is also a certified N.I.A. teacher. Her classes are held at the International Friendship Club across from the Municipal Market every Sunday at noon. The fee, 120 pesos, is a donation to the IFC. The workout is gentle, rhythmic, and open to everybody at any fitness level; it is very much engineered around doing what your body can do with relative ease, with no physical or mental pressure to ‘follow the routine.’ I am still an old gym rat and have eschewed ‘aerobics’ in any way, shape, or form until I took one of Deb’s classes three years ago at Casa Karma. You know where I will be every Sunday at noon until the end of March! Join us!
Dinner at Langostinos on the beach was a wonderful surprise. The vegetarian Bolognese spaghetti was one of the finest pasta dishes I have ever had! My dinner companions, Jan Dorland and Rob Burton, were as delicious as the food, and my darling Bogie received Jan’s leftover filet mignon with delight. We slow-walked down the Malecon, partly from the overdose of food but mainly from the crowds of people, south toward the The Palm Cabaret and the season premiere of Hedwig and the Angry Inch.
The high-voltage energy was cracking the air outside the doors of the theater as the sold-out crowd pressed to get in.
The Angry Inch band trickled onto the stage, nonchalantly tuning up; costar Yoalli Guerrero, as Yitzak, untangling long microphone cords, already in character, bustling (and bristling) his/her way around the stage like a perfect gofer.
Executive Producer Jack Aaronson sat calmly in the front row, smiling, and said to me with awe, “Ohh, the talent on this stage!” I could not have agreed more.
Then, Jordon Carnegie, as Hedwig, stormed onto the stage and held everybody’s attention for the next hour and a half without having time to even breathe between sentences or songs.
The breakneck speed of Hedwig as a production requires at least three viewings, I think. I have seen two season openers and already cannot wait to see it again. There are German-accented, lightning-fast references to the Second World War. I want more time to study the intricacies of Hedwig’s denim jacket and her eye makeup. There are a thousand threads in this brilliant production that touch every human emotion, often with a sledgehammer, sometimes with unbearable tenderness, as Hedwig spits out her life story. She is unwittingly funny, outrageously and awkwardly beautiful, broken, wounded, bitter, lonely, and like every one of us, perfect, exactly as is.