Today we are saluting the brand new Broadway revival of SIDE SHOW kicking off preview performances this week by looking back at the original production of the emotional and heartfelt musical.
I Will Never Leave You Thanks to the current resounding success of FX's hit horror anthology series AMERICAN HORROR STORY: FREAK SHOW, attracting 15 million viewers for its premiere episode alone, the prospect of an entertainment focused on the socially stigmatized inhabitants of a side show attraction is not as wholly unfathomable as it was nearly 20 years ago when Henry Krieger and Bill Russell's daring and anomalous musical SIDE SHOW opened on Broadway. Time has been unusually kind to the musical tale of the Hilton sisters, Daisy and Violet, particularly as it is now outfitted with a largely rewritten and reworked Broadway revival production spearheaded by DREAMGIRLS movie musical director and mastermind Bill Condon, yet the permanent place of these divas-in-the-making in the great canon of major musical theatre leading ladies was not always so assured. After all, how could anyone possibly contemplate measuring up to original stars Alice Ripley and Emily Skinner in the main roles of the star attraction conjoined twins at the story's core? The dubious prospect of finding new shading and detail to bring to the unquestionably expert original portrayals of the characters as seen in the premiere production seems nearly insurmountable, even now. Sometimes comparisons are utterly outright futile, though - and, time marches on, in any event. No matter, Erin Davie and Emily Padgett have a Herculean challenge set out for them given what has come before them - Alice Ripley and Emily Skinner in SIDE SHOW is the stuff of legend.
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