There's life beyond Neil Patrick Harris for the Broadway production of Hedwig and the Angry Inch. The busy multimedia star, who just won a Best Actor Tony Award, is leaving the show when his contract is up this summer. Producers announced that Andrew Rannells, another actor with major TV and Broadway credits, will step into the title role after Harris leaves August 17.
A Tony nominee for The Book of Mormon and a regular ("Elijah") on HBO's Girls, the Omaha-born Rannells will play Hedwig, the East Berlin transgender rocker with bungled sex-change surgery, from August 20 through October 12. His Broadway credits also include Hairspray and Jersey Boys, and he's played Hedwig before too, in an Austin, Texas production of John Cameron Mitchell and Stephen Trask's glam-rock musical in 2002.
On screen, Rannells was also a regular on the brief run of Ryan Murphy's television sitcom The New Normal.
Writing about Rannells in his Girls incarnation, The Daily Beast's Kevin Fallon called the actor a "perfectly coiffed walking Ken Doll" and reported that fans cheered the return to the show of his "now-gay-ex-boyfriend-turned-roommate-turned-sworn-enemy" character.
"Hedwig" will be a big stretch from "Walking Ken Doll," but then she was quite a distance from Harris's TV playboy "Barney Stinson" too. Fans of the musical, especially those who couldn't scarf up tickets in time to see Harris, will be rooting for renewed fireworks when Rannells takes the stage to "put on some make-up" and "pull the wig down from the shelf" this summer.
