Root For The Outcasts In Porchlight Music Theatre's 'Side Show'
By Melody Udell in Arts & Entertainment on Sep 21, 2015 9:45PM
Porchlight Music Theatre's 'Side Show.'
Theater is rife with sideshow acts. The stories of misfits and underdogs and oddballs being told on stage (and everywhere else) are easy to identify with. After all, rooting for the hermit to become the hero means that there’s hope for the rest of us.
That’s the feeling that you walk away with after taking in Porchlight Music Theatre’s Side Show, the first regional iteration of the production’s 2014 Broadway run, which featured significant revisions to Bill Russell and Henry Krieger’s original 1997 musical.
As the show opens, we’re invited to “Come Look at the Freaks,” a mélange of outsiders with ghastly physical deformities, weird lifestyle choices or both at a lurid ’30s-era carnival. The sideshow’s stars are Violet (Britt-Marie Sivertsen) and Daisy Hilton (Colleen Fee), a musically-talented pair of twins who are conjoined at the hip. Since birth, the two have been paraded in front of both doctors and audiences: first by a cruel, profit-seeking “auntie” (Amanda Hartley), and then by the carnival’s brutish ringmaster (Matthias Austin), who they refer to simply as “Sir.” It isn’t until a chance meeting with Terry (Matthew Keffer), a smooth-talking talent scout, and Buddy (Devin DeSantis), his vocal coach sidekick, that the girls realize they’ve been tethered to the sideshow, and Sir, for far too long.
The heart of the musical, of course, lies with the twins. Each seek their own separate versions of happiness—fame for Daisy and a quiet domestic life for Violet—but more than anything, both want the same thing: to be “normal” like everyone else. Fee and Sivertsen are exceptionally well cast and manage the dual task of making the audience feel compelled for them as a unit and as individuals.
As the twins rise from sideshow act to vaudeville stars, and escape one form of exploitation only to enter into another, we get an intimate feel for who these sisters truly are. This comes at the expense, however, of the other main characters. Buddy and Terry both touch on their own inner trials but aren’t given the time to fully explore them, although Keffer and DeSantis work hard to make up for their characters’ lack of depth. And Evan Tyrone Martin as Jake, the twins’ longtime bodyguard who harbors feelings for Violet, overdraws on his character’s intensity when, in fact, a little more subtlety would work better to endear the audience to his plight.
Weaker supporting characters certainly isn’t the biggest sin, though: The musical belongs, appropriately so, to Fee and Sivertsen. The twins’ closing ballad, “I Will Never Leave You,” is a heartbreaking final note, even if it's hard to be believed: We all know that no matter how much you embrace your differences, that ever-present longing for normalcy is difficult to quash.
Side Show runs through Sunday, Oct. 25 at Stage 773, 1225 W. Belmont, 773-327-5252 or online.