Film
director Bill Condon brings 'Side Show' back to Broadway
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[October 18, 2014]
By Elly Park
NEW YORK (Reuters) -
Hollywood film director Bill Condon is making his
Broadway debut next month with a revival of the 1997
musical "Side Show" about British conjoined twins, Daisy
and Violet Hilton, who toured the vaudeville circuit in
the United States in the 1930s.
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Condon, the director of "The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn"
films and "Dreamgirls" and an Oscar winner for his screenplay
for "Gods and Monsters," has reworked the play that premiered in
1997 and is based on the book of the same name by Bill Russell.
Previews begin on Oct. 28 with the opening night on Nov. 17.
"We started having these discussions about 'Side Show' which had
been so beloved when it was originally here but never really got
the audience it deserved," Condon told Reuters after a press
preview of the show on Friday.
"And I had some ideas about ways in which it might shift and we
started a long conversation that included Bill Russell."
The original 1997 musical earned mixed reviews and ran for just
three months but it developed cult status. Condon's revised
version premiered last year at the LaJolla Playhouse in
California and had a run at the Kennedy Center in Washington,
D.C.
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The revival will have significant changes. Several songs have
been added, while other were cut and substantial rewrites were
made.
But Condon said the biggest challenge for the new production was
finding the right actresses to play the conjoined twins, who
lead a cast of misfits and freaks in the show.
"Because you can imagine how hard it is to find two women who
can sing, dance, act, be completely different kinds of people
and look like they are twins," he explained.
"And we found these two really, really fantastic actresses."
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Emily Padgett, who appeared in "Rock of Ages" and "Grease" and Erin
Davie ("A Little Night Music" and "The Mystery of Edwin Drood") play
the twins. The look-alikes wore a single corset in preparation for
their roles.
"We were sewn in a corset together and we kind of stayed that way
though rehearsal and we tried to stay that way during breaks,"
Padgett said.
"But we are very similar from hip to toe, so our strides are
similar, so it's really not, it wasn't as hard as you might think,"
she added.
The actresses said they have developed a sisterly bond, loving and
hating each other at the same time.
In a review of the Washington production in June, the New York Times
described the show with the headline, "A Grandeur That Eclipses the
Grotesque."
"The fellow with a third leg really appears to have that extra
appendage, the lizard man sports scary scales, and the hermaphrodite
seems to be split down the middle," it added.
(Reporting by Elly Park, writing by Patricia Reaney; Editing by
Diane Craft)
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