Theatre in Review: Side Show (St. James Theatre)

	David St. Louis, Emily Padgett, Erin Davie. Photo: Joan Marcus

They've given a face lift to Side Show, the 1997 musical now back on Broadway in a heavily revised version, but they might have given more attention to massaging this strange musical's beating heart. Side Show needed serious rethinking--parts of it were borderline laughable--but nevertheless it had something. The new version, shepherded by the film director Bill Condon, making his Broadway debut, is much smoother, much more tonally consistent, and features an often-haunting production design. But it is also curiously unmoving; the result is a tearjerker in which the tears never quite flow.

For those not obsessed with musical flops, Side Show traces the history of Daisy and Violet Hilton, conjoined twins who had a brief, but successful, vaudeville career that climaxed with their appearance in Tod Browning's Freaks, the 1932 thriller that is as hard to watch as it is to forget. (Their one other screen appearance is in 1952's Chained for Life, a low-camp disaster that, oddly enough, focuses on the sisters' romantic lives or lack thereof, as does Side Show.) In real life, the Hiltons' fortunes continued to dwindle until they ended up weighing produce in a grocery store in Charlotte, North Carolina. They died in 1969.

The original production of Side Show ran only 91 performances, but it did plenty for the careers of Alice Ripley and Emily Skinner, who played the Hiltons, not to mention Norm Lewis, who made an enormous impression as Jake, their caretaker, who unrequitedly loves Violet. The show follows the sisters' discovery in a seedy carnival by Terry, a vaudeville promoter, and Buddy, a choreographer; together, they launch Daisy and Violet in a song-and-dance act--but their success proves oddly unsatisfying, as it is unaccompanied by the romances they both crave. Terry loves Daisy and Buddy loves Violet, but the obvious physical obstacles prove to be insuperable--at least for the men--and the show ends with the sisters singing the heart-tugging ballad, "I Will Never Leave You."

Condon has supervised a top-to-bottom overhaul of Side Show, beginning with Bill Russell's book. The first act now contains a lengthy flashback that traces how the sisters were born in England, yet ended up in the tawdry side show run by their guardian, the ruthlessly exploitative Sir (Robert Joy). There is even an encounter with Houdini. Terry now resorts to a court case to spring Daisy and Violet from Sir's control. The sisters' on-stage numbers are mostly new. (There are many new songs throughout.) There is much talk about the possibility of surgery to separate Daisy and Violet. Buddy is a closeted homosexual, which significantly alters his motivation for wanting to marry Violet. One of the most notable deletions is the infamous, unintentionally risible musical number "Tunnel of Love," in which Terry, Daisy, Buddy, and Violet use a carnival dark ride as a trysting place.

Side Show originally began as a dark, hard-edged melodrama that became more sentimental by degrees. Condon's version sheds most of the original's excesses, but it also jettisons its aura of darkness and danger; it is now pretty much a glossy tale of heartbreak from the get-go. This is even true of the opener, "Come Look at the Freaks," in which Sir introduces his performers. Unlike the original, which merely suggested their various deformities, the freaks are presented in full detail, thanks to Paul Tazewell's intensively detailed and highly creative costume designs. Oddly enough, this approach makes them less vivid: Instead of contemplating the pain of their seedy lives, we're busy admiring the details of Tazewell's work.

Throughout, the edges have been sanded off this Side Show. The new number "Very Well Connected," which introduces Terry, is surprisingly placid. The vaudeville routines, "Ready to Play" and "Stuck With You," are amusingly written, and are stylishly staged by the choreographer, Anthony Vvan Laast, but I missed the fancy footwork and cheerfully campy atmosphere of "We Share Everything," as staged by Robert Longbottom in 1997. (As before, Russell's lyrics sometimes strain for cleverness--"Come Look at the Freaks" seems mostly to be about the search for words that rhyme with "freak"--but the ballads, aided by Henry Krieger's melodies, retain their power.) The show doesn't want to examine Buddy's sexuality too closely, a choice that leaves his character diminished and seemingly capricious in his affection for Violet. And if "Tunnel of Love" was a ridiculous number, at least it tried to deal with the issue nobody wants to face, namely what kind of private lives are possible for Daisy and Violet. As presented here, the question simply is, Are Terry and Buddy men enough to love Daisy and Violet? Well, if they are, then what?

As Daisy and Violet, Emily Padgett and Erin Davie are accomplished singers and dancers, and Davie has a particularly touching moment when, her voice cracking, Violet all but begs Terry to love her. But they aren't as distinctive personalities as Ripley and Skinner, and their own conflicts--Daisy wants money and fame, Violet wants to settle down with a man--are made less vivid. Ryan Silverman's Terry has a huckster's smile that can signal a dozen different emotions, but his big number, "Private Conversation," in which he fantasizes a life alone with Daisy, doesn't attain the level of torment that Jeff McCarthy managed in the original. Matthew Hydzik makes a solid Buddy, but the script doesn't fully support him, leaving him pretty much a cipher. David St. Louis' Jake is a major disappointment; his reach-for-the-rafters ballad, "You Should Be Loved," is totally lacking in the terrible pain that Norm Lewis brought to it. (As Sir, Joy is as cruel and dissipated as anyone could wish.)

There are other odd touches as well. The number "One Plus One Equals Three," a bawdy preview of Buddy's married life with Violet (and, of course, Daisy), is presented as part of a newsreel promoting the Buddy-Daisy wedding, which Terry plans to stage in a stadium in Texas. But even in pre-Code Hollywood, no movie theatre would show Buddy comically cavorting in bed with two women. And the critical issue of surgery is raised, then dropped, without the necessary serious consideration; indeed, Side Show tends to present Terry as some kind of bad guy for promoting it as a way out of everyone's problems.

Many of the production's successes have to do with its design. The show opens with a striking image of Terry, carved out of the darkness, staring at a billboard for the film Freaks, on which is projected an image of grainy film stock. David Rockwell's set design includes an evocative show curtain featuring an array of tents viewed through trees and softly lit by festooned carnival lights; a tacky, rattletrap, multilevel freak show interior; a pair of jazzy drops for "Ready to Play;" and another drop consisting of quotes ripped from newspapers. An upstage cyc, which looks like an unfinished charcoal drawing of a circus tent interior, has more grit than anything else in the production. The lighting, by Jules Fisher and Peggy Eisenhauer, is as clean and clutter-free as any I've seen for a Broadway musical; they do some especially gorgeous work in carving the actors out of the darkness and treating the circus tent cyc with delicate infusions of color. Despite the reservation expressed above, Tazewell's period costumes are fine, and he makes sure that Daisy and Violet never look anything less than glamorous. Peter Hylenski's sound design is one of his best, a model of clarity and transparency.

The musical theatre historian Ken Mandelbaum pointed out in 1997 that Side Show's structure has more than a passing resemblance to Dreamgirls, with which it shares composer Krieger. (Both feature talented, naïve young ladies who get taken up by a corrupt manager, who uses his erotic hold over one of them to push them to the top of show business, where they find no personal happiness. They ultimately abandon the men who have helped them and face life alone.) Perhaps this is why Condon, who directed the film of Dreamgirls, was drawn to Side Show. In doing so, he has given us what might be called the Hollywood version. One small change is especially revealing. The big Act I ballad, "Say Goodbye to the Freak Show" is now "Say Goodbye to the Side Show." The new words are noticeably less biting; so is the production that contains them.--David Barbour