STAGE WEST
  • Home
  • About David
  • Blog
  • Contact
  • Theatre Reviews
  • New Page

Theater reviews

Stage West

The curious case of La Jolla Playhouse’s ‘Side Show’

1/1/2013

0 Comments

 
​Side Show comes with everything you’d want in a Broadway-caliber musical: a soaring score with its share of big-moment ballads, a sumptuous set, inspired costumes and makeup, and a trusty cast of experienced pro’s. So why is Bill Russell and Henry Krieger’s 1997 Broadway musical at La Jolla Playhouse so unsettling, not from anything you see but from what you feel? You get this uneasy quivering in your stomach from the very beginning, when you meet the inhabitants of a carnival freak show, and it doesn’t go away, long after the action has shifted from the circus tent to the vaudeville stage. The carnival has been left behind, true enough, but the freak show continues: Conjoined twins Daisy and Violet Hilton are swept away and lured toward a better life by talent scout Terry Connor and crony Buddy Foster, but they are still being gawked at, asked tactless questions, and exploited. The Hilton sisters’ plight seems unbearably sad in spite of their pluck and throwaway lines about their deformity. When the prospect of love, and marriage, enters the picture, you know there’s no throwaway line to save them.
            Side Show is a co-production of the Playhouse and the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, which will host performances back East next spring. Bill Condon, who collaborated with Krieger on the film version of Dreamgirls, directs this “reimagining” of Side Show, which opened on Broadway 16 years ago and ran for only three months. This new cast is led by Emily Padgett and Erin Davie as Daisy and Violet, respectively, with Manoel Feliciano as Terry, Matthew Hydzik as Buddy and David St. Louis doing the best of the vocal belting out as the sisters’ protector, Jake.
            The Hiltons’ physical conjoining is not disturbing – they appear to be no more than standing very close to each other. But it’s what you don’t see – what’s on the inside – that gnaws at you. When Terry fantasizes in Act 2’s “A Private Conversation” about loving and dancing with a “separated” Daisy, the effect is haunting. Side Show doesn’t always deliver that degree of poignancy, but it does not rely, even in the first-act freak show scenes, on shock value.
            Still, you’ll want to take a deep breath when it’s over.
0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Author

    David L. Coddon is a Southern California theater critic.

    Archives

    June 2025
    May 2025
    April 2025
    March 2025
    February 2025
    January 2025
    December 2024
    November 2024
    October 2024
    September 2024
    August 2024
    July 2024
    June 2024
    May 2024
    April 2024
    March 2024
    February 2024
    January 2024
    December 2023
    November 2023
    October 2023
    September 2023
    August 2023
    July 2023
    June 2023
    May 2023
    March 2023
    February 2023
    January 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    August 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    January 2016
    January 2015
    December 2014
    January 2014
    January 2013
    January 2012
    January 2011

    Categories

    All
    Theatre Review

David Coddon

About 
David Coddon Fiction
Theatre Reviews

Support

Contact
FAQ
Terms of Use
© COPYRIGHT 2017. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
  • Home
  • About David
  • Blog
  • Contact
  • Theatre Reviews
  • New Page