‘Side Show: The Musical’ runs every weekend at the Power Mac Spotlight Black Box Theater in Circuit Makati every weekend until August 16, 2025.
Plays and musicals that come with dark themes have been the staple of Sandbox Collective, the theater company founded by Toff de Venecia. As artistic director, he directs most of the productions, and has often expressed his affinity to “absurdists’ works.” Hence, previous productions include Little Shop of Horrors, Next to Normal, and Spelling Bee. Protagonists tend to be outcasts, or not normal by society’s standards.
Add Side Show: The Musical to this gallery of misfits. This time, it’s about physical deformity. Side Show tells the true story of the conjoined twins Violet and Daisy Hilton. Born in 1908 in the UK, they traveled to the US and became part of a circus act that showcased a cast of performers with pronounced physical defects. Back in the politically incorrect 1930s, they were merely called “freaks.”
Side Show: The Musical opened and flopped on Broadway in 1997. We saw the local production last weekend, and it’s not difficult to see why it didn’t click in the US. The libretto can’t seem to decide whether it’s a tragedy, romance, or a cute rags-to-riches musical.
The show is three hours long yet we don’t really learn much about the twins. Side Show was not exactly a critical disaster; it was nominated for a Tony Award for Best Musical. It just doesn’t have enough impact.
CJ Navato is the talent scout who discovers the twins.
The plot gets rolling when the girls are discovered by Terry (CJ Navato). He’s a talent scout for the famous Orpheum theater circuit, which specialized in vaudeville acts. Terry had been invited by a musician named Buddy (Vien King) to see and hear the twins sing in the circus. The girls soon become popular vaudeville stars and not long after, Daisy and Violet get infatuated with the two men.
Written by Bill Russell, Side Show takes its sweet time moving the thin plot, but the songs by Henry Krieger (he wrote the songs in Dreamgirls) are likeable and often tuneful. One of his lovelier compositions is More Than What We Bargained For. It’s sung by Terry and Buddy as they ponder their future with the high-maintenance twins. Though the melody sounds similar to Stephen Sondheim‘s Pretty Women (from Sweeney Todd), it’s exquisitely performed by the two actors. The problem is some of the succeeding songs offer little variation from this number, and they go on too long. A dance routine or two could have broken the monotony.
Jon Santos is the circus ringmaster.
The opening number, Come Look at the Freaks, serves as introduction to the sideshow performers. With Jon Santos making the presentation as the circus ringmaster, we eagerly looked forward to a bizarre and irreverent freak show. Well, that didn’t quite happen. A few other musicals began in similar fashion; Cabaret with the song Wilkommen, and Pippin with Magic to Do. With those rousing show-openers, Pippin and Cabaret quickly engaged the audience. Side Show’s opening is flat by comparison. Those two other musicals had a common dominator: Bob Fosse. He directed the film version of Cabaret and the Broadway production of Pippin.
With Jon Santos making the presentation as circus ringmaster, we eagerly looked forward to bizarre and irreverent freak show. Well, that didn’t quite happen
Although he died 10 years before Side Show was produced, I could imagine what Fosse would have done with it had he been the director. He might have jumpstarted it with the same bravado he gave Pippin. He would have junked the score and libretto and commissioned new ones. For Cabaret, he discarded most of the songs and had new ones written. Only three tunes from the show were used in the movie. Actually, this happened to Side Show when a revamped version was staged on Broadway in 2014. It had an even shorter run.
The shows within the shows are entertaining. Rare Songbirds on Display starts the second act, and it’s a pretty valentine to the lavish productions of the Ziegfeld Follies. The dancers need to exude more energy and move more seductively, but it’s still a crowd-pleasing number. Also spectacular is the New Year’s Eve party scene. The cast, decked in stunning period costumes and dancing the night away, gave the show a touch of glamour.
With Side Show, we got to witness firsthand the wealth of talent there is in Philippine theater. Think of it as a singing recital, and you’ll enjoy the evening—even if the material doesn’t give the cast the chance to bring the house down. Only one number gets to stop the show, and it belongs to a supporting character, Jake the circus foreman (Joshua Cabiladas). Jake reveals his love for Violet, and Cabiladas sells it and steals the show with his heartbreaking rendition of You Should be Loved.
Vien King plays Buddy, a musician who becomes Violet’s fiancee.
As the ringmaster they call The Boss, Jon Santos is made up to look like Sweeney Todd (or a 19th century undertaker), but his scenes don’t require him to show what he’s really capable of. Vien King as Buddy has a beautiful singing voice, and the songs are just a walk in the park for him.
Molly Langley (as Violet Hilton) and Krystal Kane (as Daisy Hilton) have star presence, though they sing so much like Disney princesses. Frozen and The Little Mermaid come to mind, and this does make Side Show feel like a Disney princess fairy tale. We end up hoping the two actresses have a raging Dreamgirls-like showdown. They would have slain it.
Sadly, nothing earth-shattering happens because the libretto offers very little conflict to begin with. A musical about the other Hilton sisters should generate more tension. Anyone for Paris and Nicole?
‘Side Show: The Musical’ runs every weekend at the Power Mac Spotlight Black Box Theater in Circuit Makati every weekend until August 16, 2025.
