LOS ANGELES — It’s not that “Side Show,” the musical about real-life conjoined twins Daisy and Violet Hilton, was all wrong when it opened on Broadway back in 1997. It was just that no one came to see it. Critically lauded and nominated for four Tonys, including one for Bill Russell’s book and one for composer Henry Krieger’s score, it closed after only 91 performances.
But now it’s getting a second shot. A new production of “Side Show” directed by Oscar-winner Bill Condon is a full-on revamp of the original, with 12 new songs and new scenes that deepen the sisters’ backstory. The production is running at the La Jolla Playhouse now through December 15.
“The original director and choreographer, Robert Longbottom, since he was choreographer, he had specific ideas of what he wanted to do dance-wise,” Russell told ARTINFO. “Bill [Condon] just had a different take on things and that was going back to some of this earlier stuff. It’s a new direction he had in mind for the story.”
Long a cult favorite, there had been talk of reviving “Side Show,” but it wasn’t until after Krieger worked with Condon on the film version of “Dreamgirls” in 2006 that talk turned serious. The first thing they did was mine earlier drafts of the play, shifting the focus from a backstage look at circus freaks to a biographical narrative about two sisters who dream of breaking into show business, which is precisely what the Hilton sisters did.
With all its accolades, the original production of “Side Show” might not have seemed like a work that needed to be fixed, but Condon and Russell set about fixing it anyway. “I think Tennessee Williams said plays aren’t so much finished as abandoned,” Russell said. “We had 10 years distance from it, so it wasn’t like we were married to anything at that point. The original, we did a tremendous amount of rewriting and had a trunk of material that never made it into that production.”
“Side Show” is set to travel to the Kennedy Center next year for a June 14 opening. After that, Russell hopes to bring it back to Broadway, 16 years after its debut there. Only this time he’s setting his sights on a longer run.
