The Sunset Playhouse closed its After Sunset Series with an emotionally enchanting concert performance of the musical drama Side Show. Isabel Mancl and Amy Barrett were deeply engaging as Daisy and Violet Hilton—conjoined twins who became famous stage performers in the early 20th century.
Without the distractions that usually accompany a full production, Mancl and Barrett, wearing identical costumes, filled the center of the stage with vibrant emotional energy that rested at the center of the story. Zachary Dean brought a stout gravity to the stage as the twins’ guardian and promoter—a powerful man in charge of a circus side show. Towering Bill Jackson lent deeply resonant tones of concern as the twins’ bodyguard.
Eric Welch and Joe Gallo played a couple of guys who had connections and the ability to bring the sisters out of the seedy squalor of circus side show life and into something more glamorous. The sweetly bewildering dynamic between the twins put them at odds with each other. The specific dreams of the twins and the two different men in their lives were amplified in delicate complexity in the studio theater setting.
While a fully-staged production of a musical about conjoined twins rising out of a freak show could be spectacular, the studio theater format allowed Mancl and Barrett to bring the nuances of emotion of two women to the stage with a vivid depth and complexity not often allowed in musical theater. The After Sunset studio theater series returns next September.
