SIAMESE, IF YOU PLEASE

By Richard Zoglin

Come look at the freaks! Come gape at the geeks!" The minute those accusatory opening lines are sung, by 20 actors in bleacher seats facing the audience, you fear the worst. Side Show, the first new musical of the Broadway season, tells the real-life story of Daisy and Violet Hilton, Siamese twins who became a hit vaudeville act in the 1930s. Everybody is curious about such human oddities--and aren't you ashamed!

As it turns out, Side Show takes only mild umbrage at show-biz exploitation, preferring to explore the mushier travails of two really close sisters who just can't seem to land a guy. Or guys. The musical dances daintily away from the question on everyone's mind--How do Siamese twins have sex?--in favor of more palatable soap opera. Will Terry, the impresario who guides their career, overcome his queasiness and fall for Daisy? Is Buddy, who discovered them in the sideshow, the right guy for Violet, or is he just angling for a share of the concessions from the Cotton Bowl wedding they've got planned? Most crucially, if this musical becomes a hit (and it could), which twin gets the Tony?

There's some admirable teamwork in Side Show, not just by Emily Skinner and Alice Ripley, joined at the hip as Daisy and Violet, but by composer Henry Krieger (Dreamgirls) and director-choreographer Robert Longbottom (Christmas shows for the Rockettes). The show percolates best in a couple of brisk, ersatz-vaudeville numbers (one features dancing Egyptians, swan-shaped harps and a crocodile) and in a soul-inflected showstopper, The Devil You Know. And there's at least one anthem-like ballad, Who Will Love Me As I Am? that should have Whitney Houston on the phone to her agent.

Bill Russell's book, however, is short on ideas, guts or much tension. Near the end, director Tod Browning comes on to offer the sisters parts in his new movie. They light up but are jolted back to cruel reality when he tells them the film's name: Freaks. It seems a cheap shot, especially since that 1932 film (in which the Hiltons did appear) showed a compassion for the deformed and despised that Side Show can only simulate. On the other hand, it didn't have anything resembling a hit single.

--By Richard Zoglin