United by Life, Divided by Dreams

Being a freak is virtually the new normal, so the timing couldn’t be better for the thrilling Broadway revival of Side Show that blazed open Monday night at the St. James Theater. The musical by Bill Russell and Henry Krieger, about conjoined twins searching for love and fame, or maybe just a half-measure of happiness, seems eerily appropriate for an era in which oddballs, outliers and anybody with a desperate need for the spotlight — and a way with a webcam — can achieve celebrity of some kind. But Side Show, based on the lives of the real-life twins Daisy and Violet Hilton, who became vaudeville stars in the 1930s, invites us to do much more than come look at the freaks, as the electrifying opening number beckons. This beautiful and wrenching musical, lovingly directed by Bill Condon, asks us to step inside their skins and feel what it’s like to be celebrated one moment, rejected the next, and to have the strange consolation of a companion who shares it all: the pain, the joy, the hope, the frustration. Who cannot relate to the yearning expressed so eagerly by Violet, to be “like everyone else” and live a life of humble contentment? But who could fail to understand the fervent desire of Daisy to be a big, blazing somebody, standing out from the faceless crowd? In tapping into these contradictory ambitions, the musical burrows deep into your spirit. As portrayed with layered complexity — and pin-you-to-your-seat vocal chops — by Erin Davie and Emily Padgett, the Hilton twins embody an essential truth about the human condition: On some level we are forever divided in our desires and, life being what it is, thwarted in at least some of them.