She was 19 in March 2022 when she auditioned for “Les Misérables” and flew to New York City to sing for casting directors without any intention of trying out for a lead. 

“But I was told that I ‘looked like Fantine’ that day, whatever that means,” Dortch said, in an interview.” They asked me if I knew ‘I Dreamed a Dream.’ “

Yes, she said. She knew “I Dreamed a Dream” — one of the most recognizable theater songs of all time, sung by one of the genre’s most coveted characters — and knew it well. She sang, nailed it, started rehearsals that August. She was on the road by October.  

Dortch, the 22-year-old former musical theater major, plays Fantine in the national Broadway tour of “Les Misérables,” which opens Tuesday at Chrysler Hall in Norfolk and runs through Sunday.

Based on Victor Hugo’s 1862 novel set during the French Revolution, the show tells the fictional story of Jean Valjean, a convict on the run after breaking parole. In his new life, as a factory owner and mayor, he agrees to be the guardian of a young girl after her mother, Fantine, dies. Fantine — portrayed by Anne Hathaway in the 2012 film adaptation — is a young woman who has been forced into prostitution after backstabbers get her fired from her job at the factory.

“She’s resilient, very persistent, and she loves her child more than anything,” Dortch said.

“And she has the best song in the show — but,” she added, “I might be biased.”

Fantine sings “I Dreamed a Dream” in the first act. Even after two years and more than 650 performances, Dortch sings it as heart-wrenchingly as possible every time she’s on stage.

“It’s so true that each show is someone’s first experience with theater or somebody’s first experience with ‘Les Miz,’ and I can remember those exact first moments for myself,” she said, about formative experiences watching theater, “and how much they inspired me and meant for me, and especially as a person of color too — what that can mean for young artists of color who are coming to see the shows.”

Colin Warren-Hicks, 919-818-8138, colin.warrenhicks@virginiamedia.com

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If you go

When: 7:30 p.m. Tuesday through Thursday; 8 p.m. Friday; 2 and 8 p.m. Saturday; 1 and 6:30 p.m. Sunday

Where: Chrysler Hall, 215 St. Paul’s Blvd., Norfolk

Tickets: Start at $40

Details: sevenvenues.com

The best part of my three-week trip to Ecuador wasn’t the friendly people, delicious food, incredible diversity of wildlife or even the perfect weather in July when it’s brutally hot in Hampton Roads. The best part was learning how one person can make a difference. After taking an adult education course, Angel Paz recognized an Andean cock-of-the-rock on his farm. He set up a blind and invited birders to visit, but the story doesn’t end there. With time, he also found a thought-to-be extinct bird, the giant antpitta. In 2005, Paz and his family established a refuge dedicated to birdwatching and forest conservation.

Visit refugiopazdelasaves.com.

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Share your adventure Tell us about one favorite part — a restaurant, a hike, a monument, a hotel room — of one of your trips. Day trips, too. Submit a high resolution horizontal photo and a description of not more than 125 words to whatatrip@pilotonline.com. Include the city where you live.

If you recognize that  A) the list is composed mostly of the dramatis personae from “Hamlet” and that B) Voldemort sneaked in from a Harry Potter book, you are A) an English major or B) required to attend a raucous evening of Shakespeare spoofing at Little Theatre of Norfolk’s “The Complete Works of Shakespeare (Abridged) [Revised] [Again].”

The show summarizes vast numbers of real and fake Shakespeare titles and lines in the shortest time possible. The Complete Works by the founders of the Reduced Shakespeare Co. (RSC — get it? Its initials are the same as the Royal Shakespeare Company) offers more freedom for pure improv on contemporary and local topics (LTN goes a bit far with said freedom), but first let’s give the cheeky original authors’ names. They are Adam Long, Daniel Singer and Jess Winfield and, yes, there are multiple revisions to the original 1987 show. The authors are so vain and savvy that they name the characters after themselves: Adam, Daniel and Jess.

This offers special (but thoroughly legit) challenges when Hannah Brown plays Daniel; Giuliana Mortimer plays Jess; and Lori Thurman plays Adam. Yes, they are all women underneath those codpieces, but padding resolves that issue, and let’s hear no more about it. Brown is the linchpin of this production — funny, bossy and essential. Mortimer and Thurman hold their own, however, playing women playing men (as men played female roles in the Elizabethan day) for maximum silliness. We never forget that any of our actors are women, even and especially when Brown renders snippets of Polonius’ famous “to thine own self be true” speech in a silly, slipping beard.

Costumes (by Meg Murray) and props are everything in designed-to-be-silly shows, and director Patrick C. Taylor must have given props manager Lori Dunn access to a credit card. She gives us remarkably ridiculous items such as a sword gun, an oversized thumb (“Do you bite your thumb at me, sir?” in “Romeo and Juliet”), a rubber Yorick’s skull, and a feeble (intentionally so) moon, raised and lowered sort of on cue for several scenes. Did I mention the glittery codpieces? Does everyone realize a cod (in this case) is not a fish, but instead a “baloney pony,” according to this script? I can say no more uncensored. So how do Little Theatre artists summarize Shakespeare’s 37 (or 38 or 39 — there’s controversy) plays and 154 sonnets in about 90 minutes?

They use the time-honored method of “embedded spoofing strategies.” (I just made up that term.)

English teachers and pompous literary critics (watch out there) are being teased big time. But, at the same time, famous interpretations by, say, Freud, are rendered more or less correctly. Here are some samples: “Hamlet is playing out sublimated childhood neuroses, displacing repressed Oedipal desires into sexualized anger toward Ophelia.” Well, yes. That is what Freud implied in his writings on Shakespeare.

Our locals also added a lot of shtick (a bit too much) about TV’s recent hit “Bridgerton.” Other TV-inspired embedded spoofing strategies include something modeled on “The Great British Bake Off,” perfect for explaining the gory plot of “Titus Andronicus,” which makes “Sweeney Todd” (next show up at LTN) look like a Disney children’s special. (The mentions of “Sweeney Todd” during this show become a tad excessive.)

There’s the embedded spoofing strategy on technology — good for mentions of cellphones, including the priceless “T-Mobile Kinsmen” (in place of “Two Noble Kinsmen”). There’s a sports spoof used to summarize all of Shakespeare’s history plays as a super-fast football game played in the theater’s center aisle with a soft crown being passed and fought over instead of a football. “Julius Caesar” is done as “Mean Girls;” the Scottish Play is done with burred speech, kilts and golf clubs. (Yes, there’s a real “Complete Works” on my knee for reference.) There’s an ongoing spoof on diversity, equity and inclusion — DEI — with frequent mentions of patriarchy, racism and injustice (especially good for our three females playing males-who-sometimes-played-females). That helps in covering comedies and tragedies.

Although the local references need tightening (speed being of the essence), what’s being done at LTN is just what the authors intended with sharp satire coming from a place of love and not pure anger. The more you know Shakespeare, the more you’ll laugh at his older, dragon-less version of “Game of Thrones” (a local script addition). Shakespeare haters need not apply. Just remember to join in or duck when everybody else laughs.

Bring it on home, Will: “Though this be madness, yet there’s method in it.” (Hamlet.)

Page Laws is dean emerita of the Nusbaum Honors College at Norfolk State University. prlaws@aya.yale.edu.

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If you go

When: 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays and 2:30 p.m. Sundays through Aug. 25

Where: Little Theatre of Norfolk, 801 Claremont Ave.

Tickets: $18, advance; $20 at the door

Details: 757-627-8551, ltnonline.org

Lucky Daye — New Orleans-born singer-songwriter and “American Idol” Season 4 contestant — brings his “Algorithm” tour to Norfolk. 8 p.m. Friday at The NorVa, 317 Monticello Ave. Tickets start at $38. To buy online, visit thenorva.com.

Peninsula Community Theatre presents “Something Rotten!” 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays and 2:30 p.m. Sunday through Aug. 17 at 10251 Warwick Blvd., Newport News. Tickets start at $22. To buy online, visit pctlive.org.

Enjoy an evening of country music as Hank Williams Jr. makes a tour stop in Virginia Beach. Opening the show will be Whiskey Myers, Sadie Bass. 7 p.m. Saturday at Veterans United Home Loans Amphitheater, 3550 Cellar Door Way. Tickets start at $54. To buy online, visit livenation.com.

2nd Sundays Williamsburg’s Art and Music Festival. 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sunday, located within seven blocks near 401 N. Boundary St. Free. For more information, including Sunday’s entertainment lineup, GPS location and series dates, visit 2ndsundayswilliamsburg.com.

Two nights of rocking with Jamaican reggae singer Beres Hammond at The NorVa. 7:30 p.m. Aug. 13 and 14 at 317 Monticello Ave., Norfolk. For ticket information or to buy online, visit thenorva.com.

Summer Music Series featuring Jasmine Copeland performing a mix of covers and originals. 6 to 8 p.m. Aug. 15 outdoors at Suffolk Center for Cultural Arts, 110 Finney Ave. For more information on the free series, through Aug. 29, visit suffolkcenter.org.

Events may change. Check before attending.

Patty Jenkins, patty.jenkins@pilotonline.com

Fun Fridays on the Square, featuring children’s games, activities and more. 10:30 a.m. Friday at City Square Plaza, 412 N. Boundary St., Williamsburg. Free. For more information, visit wrl.org.

Thank Goodness It’s Ocean View featuring The Tiki Bar Band, community barbecue and more. 6 to 9:30 p.m. Friday at Ocean View Beach Park, Norfolk. For more info, visit oceanviewbeachpark.org.

Groovin’ by the Bay, a summer concert series, featuring J & the Band. 4 to 8 p.m. Sunday at Mill Point Park, 100 Eaton St., Hampton. Free. For more information including the series lineup, visit visithampton.com.

Train and REO Speedwagon bring their “Summer Road Trip” tour to Virginia Beach. Opening the show will be Yacht Rock Revue. 6:25 p.m. Aug. 7 at Veterans United Home Loans Amphitheater, 3550 Cellar Door Way. Tickets start at $48.65. To buy online, visit livenation.com.

“The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged) [revised] [again].” 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays and 2:30 p.m. Sundays Aug. 9 through Aug. 25 at Little Theatre of Norfolk, 801 Claremont Ave. Tickets: $18, advance; $20 at the door. For more info, visit ltnonline.org.

Events may change. Check before attending.

Correction: A correction was made on Aug. 1, 2024. Because of an editing error, an earlier version of this story misstated the date for the Train and REO Speedwagon concert. The event is on Aug. 7.

Such is the emcee’s favored greeting at the London drag club temporarily transplanted to the Little Theatre of Virginia Beach through Aug. 11.

It’s where the elite (and effete) meet and greet — not to proselytize audiences but to humanize us. You may already recognize this as the high-stepping musical version of “Kinky Boots” (book by Harvey Fierstein; music and lyrics by Cyndi Lauper).

Based on the 2005 film starring Chiwetel Ejiofor as drag queen Lola and chameleonic Joel Edgerton as the young factory owner Charlie Price, “Kinky Boots” tells the mostly true story of a Northampton, England shoe factory just a thinning sole’s breadth from closure. Charlie (played in VB by fresh-faced charmer Zack Kattwinkel) develops a purely economic fetish for kinky boots, hoping to market them to drag queens and other fearless fellows who can finally stand on stilettos reinforced with steel to bear their manly weight. (See and hear songs such as “Sex is in the Heel.”) The British setting calls for accents (uh-oh), executed only sporadically by this cast.

It’s a formulaic musical in composition and structure, including corny rhymes and forgettable tunes by Lauper, who nevertheless won a 2013 Tony for Best Original Score. This LTVB production is additionally hampered by Kattwinkel’s tendency to stray off-key. But the trite tunes and off notes matter little when the lessons are taught so sweetly and joyfully. It’s a satisfied and well-instructed audience that gleefully exits the theater at evening’s end. It helps that the last number is a showstopper set at a fashion shoe show in Milan overrun by a hoard of remarkably costumed drag queens. Costuming credits go to Pamela Jacobson-Bowhers, Connor Payne and production director Kobie Smith.

How is this degree of final audience satisfaction possible?

Step aboard the arc/ark of this life-affirming, irresistible plot steeped in the remarkable similarities between dedicated longtime factory coworkers and those dedicated volunteers who produce and act in community theaters wherever they may flourish.

The first act of soleful/soulful plotting genius was to delve briefly into the childhoods of our two protagonists: young Charlie, the ill-equipped shoe factory owner and drag queen Lola aka. Simon (here wonderfully played by lean and lanky Norfolk State University-trained Lance Hawkins). Note: Three other actors involved in the show hail from James Madison University. Younger versions of our main male characters appear briefly onstage to establish that Charlie was blessed with a father (Brian Sheridan) who adored him. At the same time, Simon (soon to be Lola) had a father horrified by his son’s early proclivities towards gender-bending. (Young Simon likes to wear women’s shoes and dance around.) Charlie’s father dies unexpectedly, leaving Charlie a factory sinking in debt. Lola’s father disowns him, but we’re later shown hope for a reconciliation.

Charlie is also blessed with women in his life: first his rising realtor girlfriend Nicola (suitably high-toned Grace Altman) and then worker Lauren (winsome and loyal Olivia Florian). Nicola proves more interested in place (London) than person (Charlie, constrained to be in Northampton). Lauren’s real talents eventually get her promoted to management. Other male factory figures prove crucial, especially peacemaking shop foreman George (Sandy Lawrence) and trouble-making Don (well acted by James Bryan). Don movingly changes from homophobe to loyal Lola supporter, partly due to Lola’s boxing skills but more due to Don’s ability to develop humanistic ones). Hawkins’ Lola, surely the longest, lankiest Lola yet to tread the boards, is 6-foot-3 in his bare feet, but 6-foot-9 once he dons stilettos and wig. And boy, can Hawkins wear a glittery red costume!

One of Lola’s “Angels” (here meaning backup dancers) also deserves special acclaim. Besides playing a backup queen of the highest order, Payne contributes hair and makeup design serving, in his term, as “Dragaturg” [sic], an apt neologism based on the fancy theatrical title of dramaturg. A dramaturg is a sort of in-house literary expert for a theater. “Dragaturg” may well be Payne’s linguistic invention since Google doesn’t yet recognize it.

There are a lot of shoe/sole/soul-based remarks in the show, e.g., Charlie’s tender line to his newfound love Lauren: “I was a loose shoe but you need two to make a pair.” But is it, again, the general sense of kindness promoted by the show that impresses? Towards the finale, the musical’s creators Fierstein and Lauper come up with something they liken (a bit unwisely) to a 12-step code of conduct. They claim to “do it in six,” but their numbering trails off towards the end. Though they’re common sense, their dicta bear repeating (from the sheet music score): “Pursue the truth, Learn something new, Accept yourself and you’ll accept others too—Let love shine, Let pride be your guide, You change the world when you change your mind. Just be who you wanna be. Never let ’em tell you who you ought to be. Just be with dignity. Celebrate your life triumphantly. You’ll see it’s beautiful.”

The code’s not tight, but it’s surely right.

So, “Ladies, gentlemen, and those who have yet to make up your minds,” it turns out you can indefinitely postpone any such decision. Just be human.

Page Laws is dean emerita of the Nusbaum Honors College at Norfolk State University. prlaws@aya.yale.edu.

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If you go

When: 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, 2:30 p.m. Sundays through Aug. 11

Where: Little Theatre of Virginia Beach, 550 Barberton Drive

Tickets: Start at $22

Details: 757-428-9233, ltvb.com

“Kinky Boots,” featuring music and lyrics by Cyndi Lauper, is based on the book by Harvey Fierstein about a shoe factory that gets a boost from an unlikely partner. 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, 2:30 p.m. Sundays, Friday through Aug. 11 at Little Theatre of Virginia Beach, 550 Barberton Drive. For ticket price and availability, visit ltvb.com.

The 23rd annual Latino Music Festival returns to Norfolk. 2 to 11 p.m. Saturday at Town Point Park, Waterside Drive. Free. For the main stage entertainment lineup, visit festevents.org.

Wave Fest featuring Sexxy Red, Mariah the Scientist, others. 5 p.m. Sunday at Atlantic Union Bank Pavilion, 16 Crawford Circle, Portsmouth. Tickets start at $81. To buy online, visit ticketmaster.com. For a complete festival lineup, visit pavilionconcerts.com.

Virginia Symphony Orchestra Concert in the Park presents “Where Wishes Come True: A Night of Enchanted Melodies.” Park will open at 6 p.m. Sunday for pre-concert picnics. Concert starts at 8:30 at Town Point Park, Waterside Drive, Norfolk. Free. For more info, visit festevents.org.

Double the Candlelight concert fun July 24 at the Z. “The Best of Hans Zimmer,” 6:30 p.m., and “A Tribute to Taylor Swift,” 8:45 p.m., at Zeiders American Dream Theater, 4509 Commerce St., Virginia Beach. Tickets for each one-hour performance start at $36. To buy online, visit feverup.com.

Six-time Grammy Award winner Dionne Warwick will bring some of her 100 chart-toppers to Virginia Beach. 7:30 p.m. July 25 at Sandler Center for the Performing Arts, 201 Market St. Tickets start at $49.50. To buy online, visit sandlercenter.org.

Events may change. Check before attending.

Patty Jenkins, patty.jenkins@pilotonline.com

But when it comes to what is arguably the biggest prize of all, the Tony Award for best new musical, it’s a guessing game. Why? None of this past season’s fresh-faced tuners really stands out from the others. They all have their fans. And when it comes to their worthiness for the big kahuna, they all have cases against them.

Consider. You have the suffrage musical “Suffs,” (on balance, my favorite), unquestionably the most emotionally stirring of this season’s selections (which is why) and the happy coming out of a genuine multi-hyphenate Broadway talent in Shaina Taub, who recovered fast from the trauma of “The Devil Wears Prada” in Chicago. But “Suffs” should have worked out its kinks out of town rather than asking Gotham critics to forget what they previously had seen at the New York Public Theater. That sense memory hurt their reaction and caused them not to see some of the vastly revised show’s palpable strengths.

Some claim “Suffs” is also derivative and it’s certainly true that without “Hamilton,” there would not be “Suffs.” But then, Broadway is a cumulative art form by its nature and Lin-Manuel Miranda’s overcoat has many pockets: No “In the Heights,” no “Hell’s Kitchen,” that Tony nominee being as structurally derivative of that title as of the dynamic music of Alicia Keys. Heck, had Diane Paulus not revived “Pippin,” and had “War Horse” not so richly revealed the emotional inner life of large-sale puppets, I doubt “Water for Elephants” would be a credible Tony candidate, which most certainly is the case, given how well it integrates the world of the circus with the traditional Broadway musical.  It’s a great shame that Friedman’s brilliant conceit for “Merrily” will almost certainly beat out Jessica Stone, the director of “Water for Elephants” and an artist who forged the best ensemble performance of the entire season. Stone deserves a Tony for that and so do all those roustabouts on the line.

“The Outsiders” has a powerful young-adult title and many fans of its churning, impassioned score. Understandably so. But I felt like the show lost its narrative drive in Act 2 when it should have roared past its source novel to empathic heaven and Broadway glory, and that some of the staging was, well, a tad hokey. Others have preferred adjectives like “sweet.” Fair enough. It’s good to have a family show about rural lives.

“Illinoise,” a candidate with a late surge, I’m told, was a strikingly beautiful piece of work and a showcase for one of America’s greatest living choreographers, Justin Peck, and his ebullient, uber-cool dancers. The score is quixotically gorgeous but was not, of course, written specifically for the theater and even its orchestrations were very much Sufjan Stevens dependent. If you believe a Tony Award-winning musical has more of an integrative imperative, which I do, you could conclude that “The Notebook” was a more worthy occupier of that spot. “The Notebook” wasn’t nominated and will enjoy its revenge on the road, where hinterland audiences will better understand what it is trying to do.

Overall, I don’t think 2024 was the finest year for Tony nominators in any of the musical categories (although the slate for straight plays was very much on the money, with “Jaja’s African Hair Braiding,” “Mary Jane,” “Mother Play” and “Prayer for the French Republic” joining “Stereophonic”).

I say the nominating committee, which bizarrely nominated the wretched, decontexualized and spectacularly overpriced revival of “Cabaret” in many categories when only Steven Skybell and Bebe Neuwirth were actually any good, should reacquaint itself with genuine feeling, which is why folks shell out the big bucks to come to the “Cabaret.” It’s overstating things to say this revival was antisemitic, and I intend no such charge of anything conscious, but it certainly removes a masterpiece that intended to explain what can lead to a Holocaust from the context that matters most. Turning Herr Schultz’s pineapple into the branded name of a dining upgrade section of the theater was, at minimum, a tacky choice.

Jonathan Groff (“Merrily We Roll Along”) knows very well how to act a character ripped apart by his own mistakes, and is a much-deserved certainty for best actor in a musical. And when it comes to best actress in a musical, the Tony should (although may not) go to Maryann Plunkett, the steadfast emotional conscience of “The Notebook” ever since its Chicago tryout. Characters with dementia almost never appear in musicals and anyone who has suffered the affiliation of a family member could find in Plunkett’s performance equal measures of veracity and hope. No hokum there; just beautifully acted truth. No Tony is more deserved. And for many of Plunkett’s competitors in the category, of course, there is far more of a chance that the opportunity will come again.

The best revival of a play category was filled with Tony-worthy riches and represents, for me, the highlight of the season. Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ “Appropriate” is the likely winner, although the moniker “revival” is a bit weird, since this relatively recent play with a history in Louisville and Chicago was not previously seen on Broadway. I’d give the nod to Ossie Davis’ “Purlie Victorious: A Non-Confederate Romp Through the Cotton Patch.” Kenny Leon, his innate sense of humor now at its septuagenarian peak, has been restoring honor, dignity and contemporary enjoyment to great Black poetic works of the 20th century. This one not only showcased two knockout performances from the fearless Kara Young and the fabulous Leslie Odom Jr., it somehow managed to make America’s bitter (and, of course, absurd) racist legacy something America could laugh at together, and celebrate Black survival. It was a masterwork from Broadway’s greatest working revival interperter and, unexpectedly, among the most enjoyable nights of the entire Broadway season.

Finally, come all the self-congratulations Sunday, you might also spare a thought for poor Huey Lewis, whose poorly titled jukebox show “The Heart of Rock and Roll” (also zestily choreographed by Latarro) not only got shut out of everything but has been dying at the box office, ever since it opened at the end of a long line of shows. Its terrific cast and creative team should hold its collective head high as the closing notice surely comes hard upon. Anyone who has seen it (you may have to look hard) will tell you it’s a very witty and enjoyable night at a Broadway theater.

The 77th annual Tony Awards ceremony will take place June 16 at the David H. Koch Theater at Lincoln Center in New York, hosted again by Ariana DeBose. It will be broadcast live on CBS and stream on Paramount+ (for subscribers of Paramount+ with Showtime only) from 7 p.m. CT; more information at www.tonyawards.com. 

Chris Jones is a Tribune critic.

cjones5@chicagotribune.com

How often have you heard spouses of all genders introduce one another that way?

But do you recall that the notion of a loving couple as one body dates back to Plato’s “Symposium” (about 400 B.C.)? And let’s not forget Shakespeare’s Hamlet’s “Man and wife is one flesh” 2,000 years later. The trope is, of course, also mentioned in many religions’ marriage ceremonies.

Plato envisions each human as two males bound back-to-back (Children of the Sun), two females likewise bound (Children of the Earth) or one male bound back-to-back with a female (Children of the Moon). Zany Zeus eventually zaps these round entities into halves, starting each of us on a quest to find his, her (or their) missing half to complete him/her/them.

That’s “The Origin of Love,” according to the song in “Hedwig and the Angry Inch,” now in a ribald but well-rounded production by ROŪGE Theatre at the also-unconventional restaurant/bar venue of 37th and Zen in Norfolk.

Why is this 1998 hit rock musical by John Cameron Mitchell (book) and Stephen Trask (music and lyrics) so perfect for Hampton Roads’ newest theater company, led by Patrick Mullins? It also stars Steven Pacek; the director and star recently gave us “Rathskeller — A Musical Elixir” at Zeiders American Dream Theatre. For one thing, it’s Pride Month and this is a proudly gay play; and, for another, it’s the mission of ROŪGE to make theatre “universally accessible” and to “break down perceived barriers of class, culture, and content,” according to the playbill. Mullins also shares in his notes: “Musicals made me queer. Sort of.”

He gives special credit to “Hedwig and the Angry Inch,” which involves a thoughtful, even erudite, story about an East German teenager named Hansel (Pacek) who is willing to undergo a transition operation to escape East Germany by marrying an American GI. This is when the Berlin Wall divided East from West. The operation is botched, however, leaving Hansel with an “angry inch” of flesh where his genitals used to be.

She takes on her mother’s name, Hedwig, and leaves with her husband, Luther (a dark figure because of his pederasty). Luther leaves Hedwig high, dry and forced to turn tricks in a Midwest trailer park. Hedwig eventually marries again; actor Leila Stephanie, adroitly plays almost all the important people in Hedwig’s life: mother Hedwig, husband 1, Luther, and husband 2, Yitzhak, who likes to dress up as a woman. But Hedwig churlishly forbids him from doing it lest, perhaps, he might compete with her.

Hedwig has been turned against men in general by a young man she initiated into sex while Hedwig was babysitting him. (Again, we have troubling suggestions of underage sex). He is Tommy (whom she also initiates into rock music and renames Tommy Gnosis, the Greek word for knowledge). We’re told Hedwig and Gnosis enjoyed a brief time of artistic and sexual bliss, but that Gnosis stole Hedwig’s songs and abandoned her. There’s an amusingly adapted plot point in which Gnosis is said to be playing a concert at the nearby Chartway Arena on Hampton Boulevard. Hedwig keeps opening an exterior door of 37th and Zen hoping that Gnosis will mention her in his amplified remarks to his fans. He never does. However, at evening’s end, Gnosis does pop into our musical for an appearance (played by — surprise—a buff and wigless Pacek, stripped down to his underwear). Mullins notes in the playbill that the roles of Gnosis and Hedwig were played by separate actors in Mitchell’s 2001 film “Hedwig and the Angry Inch.” But Mullins prefers the stage version where one actor plays “the naïve Gnosis and the hardened Hedwig —the man, the woman, the gay, the straight and the entire spectrum of everything that lies between …”

Mullins also guides us to his belief that the musical’s theme of division is ultimately resolved. Hedwig later says, “There ain’t much of a difference/Between a bridge and a wall.” Mullins also believes that we (not Zeus) have “divided ourselves.” It is therefore unlikely that another person can ever complete us. That, we must learn to do for ourselves.

The other creatives on and offstage at 37th and Zen help us along. There’s an onstage band. For the lurid “Sugar Daddy,” no pole in the restaurant is left unembraced and microphones are suggestively placed between legs. The poignant “This Wicked Little Town” is delivered by Pacek with the despair only an accomplished actor/singer can provide.

However, nothing matches the show’s showpiece— the Platonic “Origin of Love.” Mullins’ version has Hedwig reading from a children’s storybook. The audience can see the childish renderings of the Children of the Sun, Earth and Moon getting split because a cameraman is there to film the “reading” and other parts of the show projecting them up on wall screens.

Recall the lyric, “They had two faces peering/ Out of one giant head/So they could watch all around them/As they talked, while they read…” Mitchell and Trask’s show invites such innovation and Mullins accepts. Literalizing becomes a master trope of the show combining erudition and raunchiness in a way others rarely master.

There are allusions to philosophers wedged into contemporary pop song lyrics. Classics scholars have taken this show seriously, writing articles about the types of Platonic love being illustrated (Holly Sypniewski’s “The Pursuit of Eros in Plato’s Symposium and Hedwig and the Angry Inch”). Sypniewski quotes another scholar (H. Christian Blood) discussing “super-queering Plato” (!). How do you combine allusions to Gnostic Gospels and Milton’s “Paradise Lost” with lines such as “My sex change operation got botched … Now all I got is a Barbie doll crotch”?

Answer: You get director Mullins to do it, starring Pacek, with outrageous wigs by Ryan Ward. As one of the show’s songs says, “You, Kant, always get what you want. But if you try sometime, you just might find, you get what you Nietzsche.”

Page Laws is dean emerita of the Nusbaum Honors College at Norfolk State University. prlaws@aya.yale.edu

If you go

When: 7:30 p.m. Thursdays, Fridays and Sundays through June 9

Where: 37th & Zen, 1083 S. 37th St., Norfolk

Tickets: Start at $25

Details: rougeva.org

“Six million have left the theater.”

How can one not stop to listen to such words in a play, especially with the distinguished Rabbi Michael Panitz of Temple Israel in Norfolk as its dramaturg, the production’s expert on stage history and theory?

Generic Theater’s last production of its season, “Indecent,” is a splendid, morally challenging work of sometimes breathtaking beauty and horrible, all-too-timely poignancy. Anti-Semitism, anyone? Anti-immigrant animus? Homophobia? Pulitzer Prize-winner Paula Vogel (“How I Learned to Drive”) and co-conceiver Rebecca Taichman created “Indecent” through a long process that eventually brought it to Broadway in 2017. The indecency in question, however, happened long before, in the actual 1906 play that “Indecent” references.

The 1906 play (titled “The God of Vengeance,” by Yiddish writer Sholem Asch) was actually banned on Broadway in 1923, as an already bowdlerized (i.e., sanitized) form because it contained a passionate kiss between two young women. Most of us learned the concept of a “play-within-a-play” when we studied Hamlet’s “Murder of Gonzago” a.k.a. “The Mousetrap,” a brief show in Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” intended to snare old Hamlet’s killer.  But “Indecent” is a full-on “play-about-a-play” (critic Miriam Chirico’s term) that coexists and constantly switches off with its source material.

If the quotations at this review’s start conjure Auschwitz and the Holocaust, how can this evening possibly be considered entertainment? Well, “Fiddler on the Roof” it is not —though God of Vengeance/Indecent does contain musical numbers and dancing. They share another similarity: Both are highly instructive and entertaining. It’s just that “Indecent,” with its additional theme of homophobia and its actors playing multiple parts, perhaps requires more work on the part of its audience.

It additionally contains a moral quandary for Jews and gentiles. Yes, good liberal Americans in 2024 decry censorship. But those Orthodox and Reform Jews who shut down “God of Vengeance” on Broadway were not entirely to blame for their fears. As Panitz notes in his playbill essay, “Antisemitic slander on both sides of the Atlantic promoted the fantasy of Jews as sexually depraved. In the idiom of the insecure Jewish immigrant community of the day, could such a production be ‘good for the Jews?’ ”

The Generic’s production, astutely and lovingly directed by Maryanne Kiley, begins with an apt stage image she devised: the establishment of a minyan, i.e., a quorum of 10 Jewish adults (all males in Orthodox tradition but not here) necessary to hold prayers. Ten of her actors/musicians quietly enter the upstage area and sit patiently on chairs. The character representing “God of Vengeance” playwright Asch (played by the gentle but intense Greg Dragas, the lynchpin of the show) later quips, “Do you know what a minyan is? It’s 10 Jews in a circle accusing each other of anti-Semitism.” But not here, not yet.

Minyan established, we are introduced to the troupe by their stage manager (nod to Thornton Wilder) named Lemml, the also gentle but equally intense Ed Palmer. The cast is divided into Ingenues (the younger players), The Middle (-aged) and the Elders. But here’s a troubling sign: everyone’s apparently dead (!) as indicated by the dust and sand pouring out of their clothing on cue when they stand and move forward. Dust to dust. Ashes to ashes, with those horrible implications.

We’re soon treated to a more heartening scene: Asch, age 23, waiting for his wife to finish reading his new work “The God of Vengeance.” She helpfully (for critics!) summarizes the whole play, which I’ve included from the script:
“My God, Sholem. It’s all in there. The roots of all evil: the money, the subjugation of women, the false piety … [sic] the terrifying violence of that father … [sic] and then, oh Sholem, the two girls in the rain scene! …You make me feel the desire between these two women is the purest, most chaste, most spiritual—”

The greedy, violent father is Otto, who subjugates his wife (well played by Dorothy Shiloff Hughes, whose parents were Holocaust survivors), his virgin daughter and a stable of whores in his basement. Otto’s hypocrisy extends to commissioning a Torah to impress his community and win a suitable husband for his daughter Rifkele (nicely done by Margo von Buseck). He gets irate, however, when he learns that Rifkele is in a nascent lesbian relationship with one of his employees, a prostitute named Manke (played by the accomplished Rebecca Weinstein). Old pro local Clifford Hoffman also takes the stage with his usual panache, playing several minor roles. The doubling and tripling of roles present a host of characters to keep track of, but also some clever (on Vogel’s part) ironic cross-commentary. Dragas, our Asch, for instance, sprouts a silly, obviously fake mustache briefly to portray another playwright: Eugene O’Neill.

Finally, all praise deservedly goes to the three-piece klezmer-style band: Governor’s School for the Arts student Velkassem Agguini on violin; the fantastic Jason Gresl on clarinet and more; plus Ben Blanchard on accordion. Vogel deserves accolades for uniting two volatile topics, anti-Semitism and homophobia; for comparing religious and sexual transgressions (or perceived transgressions); and for uniting two languages, Yiddish and English, with ease and courage. The play is, in the words of critic Jennifer Scott-Mobley, “at once archival and prescient.”

There’s a marvelously theatrical surprise at this production’s end  — simple yet thrilling. But we also see our now-beloved acting troupe returning to the dust from which they came. The dust and ashes, falling again from their clothing, remind us of the 6 million who indeed “left the theater” before us.

This play is, in other words, a painful but pertinent memento mori.

Lest we forget.

Page Laws is dean emerita of the Nusbaum Honors College at Norfolk State University. prlaws@aya.yale.edu.

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If you go

When: Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays through June 2

Where: Generic Theater, down under Chrysler Hall,  215 St. Paul’s Blvd., Norfolk

Tickets: $18, advance; $20 day of show

Details: 757-441-2160, generictheater.org