Emily Padgett and Erin Davie in Side Show at the St. James Theatre, New York. Picture: Joan Marcus
Side Show continues at the St. James Theatre, New York.
The revival of Side Show, the enigmatic musical from 1997 that won rave notices but couldn’t sell tickets, has opened on Broadway heralded by a new avalanche of critical acclaim. This new production, described as reinvented and reimagined, tested the waters with runs in San Diego, California, and Washington DC, before braving New York. In one of the most exuberant appraisals, the respected reviewer for the Washington Post newspaper called it “an intoxicating experience… a glorious comeback for an important American musical”.
The show, with book and lyrics by Bill Russell and music by Henry Krieger, is loosely based on the lives of the British-born conjoined twins Daisy and Violet Hilton. With their good looks and dancing talent, they became stars of the vaudeville circuit in the early 1930s and made it to Hollywood appearing in the unsettling 1932 horror classic Freaks. The revival has been spearheaded by filmmaker Bill Condon, who directed and wrote the movie adaptation of Dreamgirls and wrote the screenplay for Chicago. Other film credits include Kinsey and Gods and Monsters. Working with the original creators, Condon has directed and reshaped the show so that, according to his own account, some 60 per cent of the story and songs is new.
You can’t prove that by me, but I will say that I found this new production a respectable effort that never really delivered the thrills and chills promised. Maybe all the buzz was simply deafening or numbing. I did feel emphatically, though, the yearning of the show to be ‘important’ with its pile-up of big ballads – a sort of crush of 11 o’clock numbers – its uneasy mix of dark and light moods and its brush with the metaphysical. One of the twins describes their condition as “one of God’s mistakes”. But such elements are never explored deeply enough to become truly affecting. Even the harrowing details of how the twins in their childhood were mistreated by their guardians seem to come across as diluted Sweeney Todd.
The plot eventually boils down to a romantic dramedy that asks the none-too-universal question as to whether conjoined twins can ever truly enjoy romantic love. Both Daisy and Violet do acquire boyfriends. Daisy, the friskier, wisecracking twin, hooks up with the promoter Terry Connor, who rescues the twins from carnival show bondage and makes them vaudeville stars. The more introspective Violet has a thing with Buddy Foster, the dance and vocal coach who shapes their act. However, both these romances have their big problems. Buddy is gay, and Terry can’t stomach the idea of making love to Daisy while she’s still attached to Violet. The twins could undergo a separation operation, but the procedure could be fatal to one or the other or both. The repetitious pondering of the problem – as exemplified in the twins’ Act I closer ‘Who Will Love Me as I Am?’ – becomes a trifle monotonous.
Where the show cannot be faulted is in its casting of the twins. Erin Davie as Violet and Emily Padgett as Daisy are simply terrific in their co-ordinated dancing, harmonised singing and delineation of character. They are also beguiling eyefuls in Paul Tazewell’s costumes and Charles G. LaPointe’s assorted wigs. The show’s liveliest moments come in the re-creations of the twins’ vaudeville numbers. David Rockwell’s sets suddenly come alive with bright colours in contrast to the gloomy dark that swallows up a lot of the stage through much of the proceedings.
The vaudeville turns are also sparked by Anthony Van Laast’s clever choreography and Russell and Krieger’s catchy pastiches of old-time novelty songs making light of the twins’ attachment. The songs include such titles as ‘Stuck With You’ and ‘One Plus One Equals Three’. The latter portrays the twins bedding down with one gentleman; it’s delightfully reminiscent of the ‘Two Ladies’ number from Cabaret.
The Cabaret template is also evident in the show’s opener and closer, ‘Come Look At the Freaks’, led by the impresario of the carnival side show (played with appropriate loathsomeness by Robert Joy), as the ensemble re-creates an assortment of abnormalities from the Three-Legged Man to the Bearded Lady.
Other principles include Ryan Silverman, portraying the promoter Terry Connor, and David St. Louis as Jake, the black man who acts as sort of a bodyguard for the twins and is burdened with an unquenchable love for Violet. Both these men get to sing their guts out in extended anguished ballads describing their problematic passions. As Buddy Gay, Matthew Hydzik proves an affable song-and-dance man.
When pundits meditated on why the original production, which scored only 91 performances, couldn’t find an audience, one argument put forth was that people were made queasy by the idea of Siamese twins. I will report that at the performance reviewed, the audience was far from queasy. The first appearance of Davie and Padgett, who are hardly marquee names, was greeted with warm applause, the response to that aforementioned Act I finale was ecstatic, and the applause that came with the standing ovation at the final curtain was thunderous.
Perhaps, all that buzz was working, even without my vote.
Ron Cohen
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