Nearly 10 years have passed since this brilliantly wacked-out glam rock musical burst on to the off-Broadway scene, spawning not only an award- winning film but - by the evidence on display here - gifted artistic offspring. Young American performers Joe Roch and Megan Riordan have loved the Hedwig material since their undergraduate days, and decided to remount the show in Dublin, where audiences are unburdened by memories of co-creator John Cameron Mitchell's career-defining performance in the title role. Happily, the material does not show signs of ageing, proof both that (in an aphorism Hedwig herself might have coined) tacky is immortal, and that Stephen Trask has written a great pop-rock score.
Hedwig Schmidt is the victim of a botched sex change in her native East Berlin who, via improbable plot twists, ends up loved and left by the American rock star whose career she helped launch. The premise of the show is that Hedwig tells her life story in a down-and-out gig backed by a group of sulky Poles (the local band This Kid's Disco) and her new husband Yitzhak, an angry Croat rocker with gender complications of his own.
Mitchell's story - which brings together everything from campy diva banter to Plato's Symposium - has always seemed too complicated for its own good, but Roch, as Hedwig, is a very talented actor who commits completely to the material. His vocal performance starts out shaky, but gains strength in the numbers that use his upper range, particularly the showstoppers Wig in a Box and Wicked Little Town. Riordan shines in the less showy role of Yitzhak: her male facial expressions and posture are genuinely convincing, and her vocal power, though undertapped, is tremendous. Director Erin Murray and her creative team make the most of limited resources, though some of the attempts to fill up dead space on the large Project stage feel creaky.
· Ends today. Box office: 00353 1 881-9613.
