CLF Art Café – until 28 October 2018
Reviewed by Jason Rath
2**
“Come look at the freaks”
Never has there been a lyric written that epitomises a show in one line more than this one. “Sideshow” is a piece all about the truth behind the acts of the old freak show days, the pain and joy of constantly being with your one closest person in the world and how this impacts every single thing in your life, from marriage to job life, personality to anxieties. This show is a beautiful piece, with a brilliant thinkers plot and a gorgeous score from Henry Krieger, and follows the lives of Daisy and Violet Hilton, a pair of “Siamese Twins” who start their lives on stage at a grimy old freak show and end up being vaudeville’s biggest stars. We see them grow as women from timid naïve girls to strong independent women and watch all the twists and turns along the way. This show has all the tools necessary to succeed but as we all know sometimes this does not necessarily translate onto the stage.
Katie Beudert and Lauren Edwards were both fantastic as Daisy and Violet Hilton respectively. They played beautifully together and the close harmony work between the two was great. Beudert really showed off her acting chops in this piece and, while I think that Edwards was indeed strong, I think she got slightly overshadowed by her on stage sister. Alexander Bellinfantie was good as Jake, with a beautiful voice for such a young man, although he did sometimes let his riffs and trills get in the way of his diction which meant there were a fair few times where I completely lost what the lyrics were saying. Matthew James Nicholas was good as Terry Connor, the girls manager/agent, with a great voice and some brilliant acting, although I did get the odd feeling that at times maybe he didn’t want to be on that stage tonight as I could spot him sometimes getting distracted by what was going wrong or what needed fixing. Barry O’Reilly was also strong as Buddy Foster, with some great notes in is vocal register and, although maybe his acting wasn’t the strongest in the world, I did enjoy his performance. The same cannot be said however for the ensemble. While the vocals and harmony work were strong throughout the piece, I really can’t get over the lack of precision and drill in the ensemble. One particular thing the bugged me was the scene with them “reading” the newspapers. Whilst some members of the ensemble were fully in the moment, others were constantly glancing up over the top or even worse looking out into the audience to see what was going on, completely breaking character.
While I did have my problems with certain aspects of cast performances I think there were some strong technical aspects. There was some strong direction on show, whether that was used to its fullest extent or not is another thing. However one thing I did not understand was why the whole piece was set without even acknowledging the massive pillar that goes straight through the stage centre front and completely obscures view. If this was incorporated into the piece then maybe I could deal with it but it was just ignored and this really grinded on me. The lighting was good creating a really eerie environment on stage and this really helped the piece. The sound was poor with white noise and loud sounds constantly coming over the system, much to the audiences disappointment.
In conclusion, “Side Show” was a piece that had so much brilliant potential and, while it was there and evident, it was not always utilised properly. I came expecting so much good stuff from this show and I have to say as I left, I was pretty disappointed