First Apocalyptic Horseman Named Girth McDürchstein

by Walt Greenleaf, theatre reviewer

Recently, an alert reader e-mailed me asking me what I thought were four events in the past decade that have marked the impending approach of the Apocalypse. After sifting through hours of boy band fan club newsletters and Seventeen magazine, there were so many events to choose from I was having a difficult time narrowing it down.

That was before I saw the rock opera Girth McDürchstein's 'The Hedge' at McClellan University in downtown Indianapolis last Wednesday. After seeing this show, I had suddenly found my answer for her.

"Ruth," I wrote back to the woman, "I must apologetically inform you that none of the events of recent years have had any significant apocalyptic impact, but I have encountered the first horseman, and his name is Girth McDürchstein."

Yes, you see, McDürchstein has the audacity to charge money for an incomprehensible work of performance art that only the most devoted member of the Girth McDürchstein fan club can call "almost good." With painfully screeching guitar solos and McDürchstein taking center stage to wallow in his own supposed brilliance, everybody in the audience (save me) seemed to be captivated by the man with the strawberry bangs.

The story goes like this: a young boy has a hard life, becomes a rock star, goes insane, and ends up dead. The result is a surreal nightmare, but does the plot sound familiar? I thought so. A Star is Born used this same plot to great effect three times (a fourth is in the works by master director Oliver Stone). It is also, loosely, the plot of a little-known Alan Parker film called Pink Floyd — The Wall, apparently written and produced by a failed rocker called Roger Waters in a desperate attempt to capture the limelight.

However, McDürchstein's travesty goes far beyond bizarre animation and gratuitous close-ups of worms fornicating and children being led to slaughter. The Hedge shows us, in graphic detail, human fornication, child molestation, 3D polygon violence (blood sprites included), masturbation, alcohol consumption, drug abuse, candy abuse, and a homicide-suicide by the star himself. As we watch this unfold live before our eyes, with McDürchstein performing vile sexual acts on a paid companion as he spouts curse word after curse word, I felt the need to cover my eyes to shield my good soul from this propaganda of a moral rapist.

The play is based on a widely read case study, a journal called El Laberinto de los Diablos written by a teen suicide victim by the name of José Barrenechea. McDürchstein's retelling of the powerful, sometimes sweet journal of a disturbed youth is, in simplest terms, a complete and utter bastardization of Barrenechea's diary. The thought that McDürchstein would even admit that El Laberinto was a source of inspiration, much less the outright basis, of this travesty is reprehensible, and perhaps proves beyond the shadow of a doubt that this man is an incompetent lunatic.

I award this rock opera zero stars out of a possible four.

Reprinted from The National Inquisitor, week of Thursday, August 8, 2004