There's a new star on Broadway - well, "east of Broadway," as she puts it - and she's bringing some sex, sass, and serious noise to the Great White Way. She's Hedwig, the bawdy wordsmith who heads up the punk band The Angry Inch. She's lewd. She's rude. And she's played by a dude.

Stephen Trask and John Cameron Mitchell's Hedwig and the Angry Inch - which began previews at the Belasco last week - tells the bittersweet tale of Hansel-nee-Hedwig Schmidt, an East German "slip of a lady-boy" singer brought to the States by the interwoven forces of the U.S. military, a botched gender reassignment surgery, and old-school rock-and-roll. It's part concert, part confessional, part cabaret. And in the capable hands of director Michael Mayer (Spring Awakening) and star Neil Patrick Harris, it makes for a rousing, uproarious, and moving night at the theater.

Hedwig's inching from the queer underground clubs of downtown NYC all the way to Broadway is a journey almost as strange and delightful as that of its ridden-hard-and-put-away-wet protagonist. When, after years of development, the show opened Off-Broadway at the riverside Jane Street Theater in 1998, it was the hottest ticket in town. (I would know - I couldn't afford one, so I went to a nightclub that was holding a giveaway and scored a pair from a towering drag queen in a Peter Pan outfit.) Mitchell - who wrote the show's book and originated the now-iconic title role at the Jane - went on to direct and star in the film, which is and always will be one of the greatest movie musicals of all time.

Now Hedwig has made it to Broadway, which necessitates some adjustments. After all, our acid-washed wailer and her band of Eastern European headbangers (including Yitzhak, beautifully rendered by Lena Hall) are not exactly marquee material for a tourist-swarmed neighborhood whose other residents include Disney, Guy Fieri, and the WWE. But a suitable enough explanation is given for the fact that this down-on-her-luck, "internationally ignored song stylist" is playing Broadway, as well as for the show's appropriately bleak and chaotic set (it's a leftover from Hurt Locker: The Musical, which "closed at intermission" of its premiere just the night prior). But the sets, the setup, and even the distractingly muscular thighs of Harris straining at their fishnets quickly fade into the background once the Inch strike their first chord.

Because Farrah Fawcett knockoff wigs and genius wordplay aside, the true star of Hedwig has always been the music. Pulse-pounding, raw, and achingly beautiful, the songs of Hedwig have always more than made up for the show's problematic narrative. Which is just fine - the Cliff's Notes version of Hedwig's sad and sordid tale is illustrative enough. And it is a pleasure in itself to sit in a Broadway theater and simply be assaulted by uncomplicated, brilliant songwriting.

But apart from the die-hard Hedheads (I'd consider myself "Hedhead-adjacent"), the real draw of this show is Neil Patrick Harris, a veteran song-and-dance man returning to Broadway after a decade-long hiatus. As luck would have it, I saw him strutting his stuff at the Belasco at the very moment that his long-running hit television show How I Met Your Mother was airing its very last episode. It's a coincidence worth noting: as Harris is winding down a hugely successful era in his career - in which he came out publicly as gay, slyly lampooned himself in the Harold and Kumar movies and Old Spice ads, turned his Barney Stinson character into a bro icon for straight dudes everywhere, and emerged as the most prominent gay celebrity of his generation - he is reinventing himself in an audacious, ballsy way by tackling the role of a singing, stage-humping, genderf*cking hot mess. It's the queerest we've seen him to date - which is saying a lot considering this is a man who has hosted the Tony Awards multiple times.

In fact, Harris's ease as an awards show host (he's won multiple Emmys for the job) makes him an ideal fit for Hedwig. It's more or less a one-woman show, and Harris commands the theater, amping Hedwig's criminally clever stage banter for the Belasco's considerably larger house. He also has the pipes to pull off a full ninety minutes of singing, screaming, and purring out his numbers - all without losing a single lyric to the cacophony of guitars. His patter with the audience is great, and his acting chops and impressive voice work are on full display in a touching scene where he plays both Hedwig and her longtime paramour and alter-ego, Tommy Gnosis.

But Harris's polish - at this early stage of the run, anyway - does at times work against him. While he hits all the notes, lands all the jokes, and strikes all the right poses, there is still a slight hesitancy in his physicality. It could be that the 90 minutes on stage are clearly exhausting, and he's wisely rationing his energy. It could be that he's still working his way into Hedwig's skin. Or it could just be the gold platform boots. But as Hedwig herself says, "you've gotta leave something behind to be free"; Hedwig might benefit if her A-list star left some of his poise and polish at the door. (This is, after all, rock-and-roll.) I'm not saying he's playing it safe, by any means - he does end the show wearing nothing but pleather hot-pants and glitter, after all. But even then, his chiseled form almost looks too magazine-ready for a down-on-her-luck underground drag performer.

Neil Patrick Harris with co-star Lena Hall

Photos: Getty

It's also a bit of kismet that Hedwig is hitting the big-time just as the national dialog about trans people is reaching its broadest point in decades. Jared Leto won an Oscar (and a dozen other awards) for playing a trans woman on screen, but he also was the rallying point of controversy over the casting of a man in a trans part. Laverne Cox is slaying it both on Orange is the New Black and as an advocate for trans awareness. Even RuPaul's Drag Race is under fire for its haphazard use of language that is now considered sashay-passe. Hedwig's story is complicated: while not trans in the traditional sense, her story envelops people of all genders, identities, and sexualities and imagines a universe where spiritual connection trumps all (most notably in the gorgeous ballad "The Origins of Love"). Hedwig is none of us and all of us at the same time, and her story is one that we all can learn from.

This audacious big-stage production is clearly banking on the the lure of NPH to get the uninitiated into the theater, where they will no doubt be roused and moved by its powerful, pedal-to-the-metal tale of a boy trying to find his identity - and maybe even love - in a world that's not quite ready for him. Here's hoping that Broadway is ready for Hedwig - because once she warms up a little, this Hedwig is ready to tear Broadway a new one.