Sideshow

It’s great to see a new musical enter the community theatre repertoire, especially when it’s done well.

Over the years, some strange ideas for musicals have lost their producers a packet in the process flopping on Broadway. Sideshow is among the more rational of those marginal ideas. There’s an inherent, engaging theatricality in the true story of the singing / dancing Hilton Sisters, Daisy and Violet, Siamese Twins who found their way out of a freak show to become US Vaudeville celebrities in the 1930s. There’s also something particularly moving about the predicament they face in finding love.

While I was lucky enough to see Sideshow in its short-lived Broadway incarnation, I wondered if any local company would be game enough to stage this enjoyable, if flawed, musical.

Shire Music Theatre has finally taken up the challenge, delivering a strong amateur production.

Director / Choreographer Sonja Benson brings a strong, clean original vision to a show where audiences have no preconceptions.

Central to the show are fine performances by the co-joint leading ladies, Linda Hale and Cara Dibdin. Always in separate costumes, and never physically linked; you’d certainly have thought they were. Only on a couple of occasions in big numbers does their link stretch credibility, becoming just a little too flexible (when they moved from side by side to virtually back to back). Yet it isn’t just a physical link, their voices blending and harmonizing superbly and their contrasting characterisations are complementary and credible. In real life the two performers are very different, yet their costumes and wigs establish a credible illusion. Theirs’ is truly a performance in synch.

Michael Astill (Terry) and Gavin Leahy (Buddy) give them capable support as the not so strong men in their lives, as does Ed Mafi as their loyal friend from the Sideshow. Terry and Buddy, though, are vacillating men who are harder to engage with than the sisters.

Musical Director Andy Peterson and his compact orchestra do full justice to this score from the writers of Dreamgirls, which includes some sensational, emotion charged duets for the twins, alongside clever theatrical set-pieces.

The show calls on small contributions from nearly every member of the ensemble, and while not all these contributions are uniformly strong, when it comes to the group sequences, this is a most cohesive enthusiastic ensemble, which handles quick changes very adeptly.

A highlight of Sonja Benson’s choreography for me lies in her conception of the Vaudeville numbers, creating a progression from hilariously tacky beginnings to the classier level the twins eventually reach.

The production is well crafted to the small Sutherland Memorial Arts Theatre stage. Sets are minimal, with some effective use of gauzes, and the period freak show posters surrounding the proscenium, being particularly effective choices. Transitions throughout are smooth, the only dramas being with a couple of large props used in the vaudeville sequences.

Alas, while the Broadway critics liked Sideshow, ticket-buyers stayed away. Perhaps they couldn’t get their heads around the idea of a musical about Siamese Twins and freak shows.

Sydney audiences should take the opportunity to fill the theatre for the final performances of Sideshow, and encourage Shire Music Theatre to continue their bold programming choices.

Neil Litchfield

Photographer: Grant Leslie of Perfect Pictures