'Side Show,' 'The Elephant Man': Freak shows back on Broadway
Rocker turned actor David Bowie playing the title role in "The Elephant Man," Sept. 1980. Credit: AP / Ron Scherl
The impulse to stare at biological oddities must be at least as old as our ability to recognize ourselves in the mirror. Although gawking is now considered bad manners, freak shows were huge popular entertainment for centuries, peaking with the Victorians and disappearing more than half a century ago, when science taught us to know better.
Or maybe not. Whether coincidence or something in our unruly psyche, freak shows are topics of fascination this year.
The appeal/revulsion/romanticism of physical anomalies has returned to Broadway in two high-profile revivals. First is "Side Show," a drastically revised version of the 1997 musical about the Hilton sisters, real-life conjoined twins who were a vaudeville sensation in the '20s and '30s. (In rehearsals now, previews begin Oct. 28, opening Nov. 17 at the St. James Theatre, 246 W. 44thSt.)
Then comes Hollywood heartthrob Bradley Cooper, playing ugly in "The Elephant Man," Bernard Pomerance's 1979 Tony-winning drama about John Merrick, the hideously disfigured Englishman who became a celebrity in the late 19th century and died, at age 27, in 1890. (Rehearsals begin Oct. 13, previews start Nov. 7, opening Dec. 7 at the Booth Theatre, 222 W. 45th St.)
And Ryan Murphy has chosen freak shows as the theme of the fourth season of "American Horror Story," which begins Wednesday on FX. Jessica Lange, who already won two Emmys for previous wicked portrayals on the series, plays an ex-German cabaret star reduced to being an emcee on the small-town freak circuit in the South in the early '50.
To be fair about the chronology, Cooper has been consumed with Merrick's story since he was 12 and saw David Lynch's 1980 movie. "Bradley even did his thesis on him," director Scott Ellis told me in a recent phone interview. At the Williamstown Theatre Festival in 2012, the two did a well-received revival of the play -- which, unlike the movie -- creates Merrick's physicality without the use of makeup or props. The Broadway production will again co-star Patricia Clarkson as Mrs. Kendal, the actress who introduced Merrick to her high-society friends.
Ellis, the ridiculously busy director also staging "You Can't Take It With You" and "On the Twentieth Century" this season, has his own theories about the allure, if that's the right word, of so-called freaks.
"I'm an identical twin," he said. "So the idea of an egg not splitting, in some bizarre way, that has always interested me." Taking a more sociological than biological view, he believes "a part of us just wants to relate, or can't relate, or would like to try to understand what it would be like to be that extremely deformed, that different."
I asked what would possess such an extremely attractive man as Cooper (or Billy Crudup in a 2002 revival) to play a man whose appearance made people cringe. "I think that's part of it," said Ellis. "What do we see outside and what don't we see inside? We see someone beautiful walk down the street, but we don't know who is behind that. How could it have been to come into this world and be sold to a circus?"
The closest we come to freak shows today, I believe, is reality TV, shows that invite us to watch the most extreme and stupid behavior -- personality freak shows, if you like.
Bill Condon, director of "Side Show," agrees. "Watching these jaw-dropping things feels kind of forbidden, in a way." And forbidden is a subject he knows. (Until I saw his dazzling movie version of "Chicago," I wanted to forbid anyone from trying to go Hollywood with Bob Fosse's dark and stylized musical.)
Although "Side Show" is his stage directing debut, his career has included writing and directing "Gods and Monsters," the movie about the director of "Frankenstein" and "Bride of Frankenstein." He also directed vampires (the last two installments of the "Twilight" series) and currently is working on a live-action "Beauty and the Beast."
In that context, the reanimation of a cult musical about conjoined twins seems almost logical. "I started with an appreciation of the score; it's a major score," he told me in a phone conversation on the way to the airport to catch a plane to L.A. to discuss "Beauty and the Beast."
"Side Show," with a book and lyrics by Bill Russell and music by Henry Krieger, opened to mixed reviews in 1997 and, though it ran just a few months, its reputation has grown through the years. Condon saw the show several times on Broadway, and "there was a really good production in California. It got under my skin."
Besides, he had worked with Krieger on the "Dreamgirls" movie and says, "I knew how open he was to reimagining and revisiting" his shows. A reworked version of "Side Show" first played in La Jolla in 2013 and then, to much acclaim, at the Kennedy Center earlier this year.
He says the new edition concentrates much more on descriptions in a biography of the sisters, on "their special quality, almost a transparency. They were onstage being looked at, but it was as if they could see right through you.
"When we go to see freaks," he continued, "they remind us of our own shortcomings and remind us of how delicate the balance in what we might consider 'normal.'" Asked if there's something in the air now that brings us back to look again at physical abnormalities, he laughed and said, "In terms of 'American Horror Show,' well, I used to be partners with Murphy, and we both shared an interest in freaks."
More to the point, he said he has "a kind of hope that our culture is moving away from a celebration of the normal to the celebration of what's different about us. 'Otherness' has grown to be something to be celebrated."
