NEW YORK — “Come look at the freaks,” goes the accusatory opening number of “Side Show,” the eclectic and enticing 1997 musical from Bill Russell and Henry Krieger that looks at the struggles of conjoined twins, each eager to escape the carnival, develop careers, experience love and find themselves. It’s a classic Broadway theme, as sung here by an emcee gone to seed. Most musicals (and their TV spinoffs) deal either with freaks writ large, or with ordinary people convinced that something inestimably weird resides within. We’re all either looking at freaks or wishing they’d stop looking at us. Maybe both at once.
This probably explains why this show, now revived on Broadway by director Bill Condon in a commercial transfer from Washington’s Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, has quite the cult following. Well, that and our perennial, and perennially creepy, fascination with twins, an objectified subset of the world widely assumed to possess a level of intimacy with a fellow human of which we solo arrivees can merely dream.
Krieger scored “Dreamgirls” before he wrote the music for “Side Show” and, the period carnival and vaudeville settings notwithstanding, you can hear the Motown influence in many of the show’s signature power ballads. Such irony-free numbers as “Who Will Love Me As I Am?” put one in mind and arena-size mood of Whitney Houston or Jennifer Hudson. Listening again to the catchy build of “I Will Never Leave You” at the St. James Theatre this weekend, I was struck by the song’s absence of humor, in this rendition anyway. Given what leaving entails for a conjoined twin.
But it’s a great song, right up there with “And I’m Telling You I’m Not Going,” which is not in this show but would fit really very nicely, when you think about it.
Joking aside, ladies and gentleman, the accessibly scored “Side Show” is a smart and unusual piece of writing from Russell, and I’ve long been among its fans. The original production, which starred Alice Ripley and Emily Skinner, is not easily erased from memory, given the depths of emotional resilience and despair its stars achieved as they sang from the depths of their boots, nor are subsequent regional incarnations in Chicago and elsewhere. The piece has been revised for this Condon revival, which is a serviceable rendition of the main material with generally solid leading performances, but will, for die-hard fans, be something of a disappointment.
It only goes so far; this is a “Side Show” eschewing the main event.
The main problem with the production, designed by the blue-chip team of David Rockwell, Paul Tazewell and the lighting studio of Jules Fisher and Peggy Eisenhauer, is simple, although it might sound weird. As played by Erin Davie and Emily Padgett, their charms and clear talents notwithstanding, the twins Violet and Daisy Hilton are too much alike. And thus they’re too much of a wash for the show to have the requisite fire.
Despite their acting in tandem, the twins of “Side Show” are actually supposed to be quite different in personality. Moreover, the show needs them not to like each other for most of the musical’s duration. The piece revolves around a quest for self-actualization — most musical heroines want that, but these two are in an especially tricky spot, since such a quest inherently undermines the other. By the end of the show, the twins come to see that having someone who shares your problems, experiences and desires with such intimacy can be a real asset. But that’s after a long trip from the carnival run by nasty Sir (played, creepily, by Robert Joy) to the potential arms of Terry (Ryan Silverman) and Buddy (Matthew Hydzik), neither of whom can be fully trusted, it turns out.
Violet and Daisy must learn to accept their lot, as we all must do, to change what they can and accept what they cannot. But that theme, which is the main pull of the show, can’t really operate if they do not first try to wrench themselves away. Instead, this show looks too often toward its own ending. That lack of sharp contrasts bleeds into the physical production: The shows within the show become the show, even though everyone should be trying to bat that down.
Some things work well — the freakish friends of the twins, including their minder Jake (David St. Louis) are played with melancholy and sepia-toned affection. Silverman and Hydzik, both playing self-loathing characters, have a few moments of connection. And you do always feel that Davie and Padgett have a deep affection for their vulnerable characters, whose unique but tricky-to-do physical connection they manifest in a way you can believe. Condon’s work is atmospheric and, occasionally, has some richness.
But the atmosphere is strangely sexless, a problem given that Violet and Daisy are very interested in achieving sexual fulfillment, a theme any production of this musical needs to confront, not fear. The freakishness of “Side Show” has to be as real as the desires of the human exhibit with two bodies, two personalties, two sets of desires and yet only one vehicle for mutual delivery. Davie and Padgett are fine, but they should make you feel like their song is coming from the depths of their own two guts, not one shared.
“Side Show” plays on Broadway at the St. James Theatre, 246 W. 44th St.; 212-239-6200 or SideShowBroadway.com
Twitter@ChrisJonesTrib
