The Boston Side Show

[Dollypop]

Posted: 5/27/03 at 8:42pm

As I mentioned a while back, I spent the Memorial Day weekend in Boston, where I caught the Lyric Stage Company's production of SIDE SHOW. Overall, it was a good production, but there was a major problem in the castiong of the two leads. I mean, if you are casting two women to play Simese Twins, shouldn't they look remotely similar? Susan Molloy played Violet and she had the map of Ireland all across her face. Maryann Zschau was Daisy and she had definite Greek features. It was like Olympia Dukakis and Barbara Eden had been cast as twins. To make matters worse, Ms Zschau appeared to be somewhat older than Ms Molloy; making them seem more of a Mother-Daughter Act than Siamese Twins. It distracted me throughout the evening.

Peter A. Carey played Buddy, Christopher Chew played Terry and Brian R. Robinson was a well-sung Jake. They all were fine in their roles.

The direction by Spiro Veloudes was fine for the thrust stage, and the orchestra sounded good. However, this was a small theater and I ask (as I've asked so many times before!) WHY DID THEY HAVE TO AMPLIFY THE PERFORMERS?????? Even the chorus wore mikes!!!!!! It would have been such a treat to hear natural sounds from the cast instead of electronically enhanced noise. They could have easily scaled down the orchestra to enable to voices to be heard more distinctly, but instead they settled for noise over m-u-s-i-c!!!!!

Bill Russell, who wrote the book and lyrics, was in attendance and he seemed to be enjoying himself.

While in Boston, I also attended a performance by the Boston Pops which was entitled "A TRIBUTE TO AMERICA". It was glorious! Most of the music was patriotic in nature and there was a grand performance of Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue" that gave me goosebumps. After the second intermission, Maestro Keith Lockhart led the orchestra in a rousing rendition of "All That Jazz" that was absolutely wonderful! You can't imagine how great it was to hear this tune played by a 100 piece orchestra!!!

Afterwards I had a very brief visit with Maestro Lockhart (who gets better looking every day!). He was literally dashing off to catch a flight to Salt Lake City, where he conducts the Utah Symphony Orchestra; leading me to dub him "The Crown Prince of Frequent Flyer Miles". Still, he's one of the finest people I know and I was glad to chat with him while he zipped off.

[itwfan]

Posted: 5/27/03 at 9:38pm

Thanks for the review. I know this is sort of off topic, but amplification seems to be a real problem even in Broadway theatres. It seems so tacky when the mikes aren't calibrated well. I saw The Boys from Syracuse with Erin Dilly last year and it really threw me off. Thats All.

[Hank]

Posted: 5/27/03 at 10:08pm

Sorry, I thought this was about baseball. Hey the Yanks finally won one NY 11 Bos 3. By the way, I remember the NY production of Sideshow, and I loved it, and I would love to see it get another go.

[aliceripley]

Posted: 5/28/03 at 6:12am

LOVE the Boston Pops! I got a CD of theirs purely because it had With Voices Raised by Ahrens & Flaherty on it - turned out that was really dreary but the rest of the disc was glorious! Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy done by a huge orchestra - fab.

DP - did you see SideShow on Broadway?

[Dollypop]

Posted: 5/28/03 at 8:42pm

Yes, I saw the Broadway version of SIDE SHOW.