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VA43-pickSTAGE-2016

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Hold Onto Your Wigs

Local troupe Ghost Light Theater staged a killer Evil Dead: The Musical last year, but now these players are washing the fake blood out of their costumes in favor of a more earnest — but still outrageous — show: the award-winning rock and roll musical Hedwig and the Angry Inch by John Cameron Mitchell. Hedwig opened off-Broadway in 1998, became a film in 2001, and starred Neil Patrick Harris when it came to Broadway in 2014. It’s the story of an East Berlin boy named Hansel, played here by Kevin Tracy, who undergoes a sex change operation after falling in love with an American G.I. Years later, Hansel (now Hedwig) ends up in the United States, leading her rock band on tour and telling the story of her life in a rock concert: candid, sad, and full of joy and bitter laughter.

Hedwig and the Angry Inch: Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m. $20. Gateway City Arts, 92 Race St., Holyoke. facebook.com/ghostlightmass.

— Hunter Styles