Michael Glitz

The problems are many, beginning with the novels themselves. Oh, they're wonderful and I can't wait for the final book in what is now a trilogy. But when I first heard of the project my initial reaction was not excitement but a quizzical 'Really? Wolf Hall as a play?' Anything can be transmuted into another form of course. But the great strength of the novels is their interior richness. There's plot-a-plenty but that's not what makes Wolf Hall and Bring Up The Bodies great. It's Mantel's quicksilver capturing of Cromwell's thinking, the delight in being inside the mind of the smartest person in the room. All of that would be very hard to dramatize on a stage, to say the least. Your main character remains a cipher to most everyone around him. But what of it? He might address the audience, allow us into his thoughts, like a Richard III. We might delight in his confidence and his confidences. Sadly, the play doesn't attempt this.

And yet, putting all that aside the real and tragic problem with Side Show is that I never for a single moment thought I was seeing conjoined twins, two individual sisters with passions and desires of their own who were also connected in every possible way to each other. They merely seemed like two women who just happened to be standing very close to each other. I don't know why. Having heard repeatedly about the magical symbiotic performances of Ripley and Skinner, I was eagerly looking forward to what Davie and Padgett would do. They are good and sing with precision and passion on the big numbers 'Who Will Love Me As I Am?' and 'I Will Never Leave You.' I just never felt they were very well connected.