John Cameron Mitchell will reprise the title role in his 1998 musical Hedwig and the Angry Inch on Broadway in the fall of 2010, according to the New York Post. Composer Stephen Trask will add new songs for the show, which will be set in a Broadway theater. (No venue has been announced.) Off-Broadway producer David Binder and director Peter Askin will reprise their roles for the upcoming revival.
"Hedwig is ageless, but I'm almost 47, which means I'm at the gym every day, trying to get my old body back, my paunch down and my stamina up,” Mitchell told the Post. Noting that he last played the flamboyant East German transgendered rock singer—who narrates the story of his life during a concert—in the 2001 movie adaptation, Mitchell added, "The role is so hard and so challenging that it made me give up acting and concentrate on writing and directing. It's like Hamlet. Except that Hamlet doesn't have to sing 15 great songs. In a dress."
The idea of presenting Hedwig on Broadway grew in the wake of productions such as Spring Awakening, Passing Strange and now American Idiot. "Back in 1998, Broadway was unthinkable," Trask told the Post. "That's no longer the case."
Hedwig and the Angry Inch opened at the Jane Street Theatre on February 14, 1998 with Mitchell (who also wrote the book) as Hedwig and Miriam Shor as bandmate and aspiring drag queen Yitzak. It went on to play 857 performances, closing April 9, 2000. After Mitchell departed, Hedwig was played by Kevin Cahoon, Michael Cerveris, Matt McGrath and Ally Sheedy.
Mitchell was nominated for a 2002 Best Actor Golden Globe for his performance in the Hedwig movie, which he also directed. Since then, he wrote and directed the sexually explicit 2006 movie Shortbus.