Side Show Performance Report

Musical theatre has a long history, stretching back all the way to ancient Greece. Although it has radically transformed since then, it is still a form of theatre that combines songs, music, spoken dialogue and dance into one flowing production. This particular musical, Side Show, was performed at the University Theatre on the UTD campus. It was performed on the weekends of April 8- 10 and April 15-17. Loosely based on the true story of the conjoined twins Daisy and Violet Hilton, the story depicts the transition of the two twins from a small side show to becoming famous vaudevillian performers.
One key characteristic of musicals is the ability to flow from speech to song very easily. This musical had hardly any actual speech. The actors would say maybe a few words, maybe a sentence, before switching into a song. Also, although it was sung, many of the songs were still a conversation held between the performers. The music varied from short, staccato like notes that took place while the performers were “speaking” in song to the long vibrato notes at the end of phrases. Most notes were short in order to allow the audience an understanding of what’s being said. Being a musical, the whole story was sung, so it was imperative that the audience could understand the lyrics. I was surprised at how well I could understand what they were singing. Usually when seeing a musical, the story gets lost to me from time to time. They enunciated well enough to understand most of what was being sung. The flow of the music was also very fluid. The transition between songs was quick and sometimes almost unnoticeable.
I also want to note the small orchestra that performed the music for the songs. It was composed of a tiny woodwind and brass section as well as percussion, a synthesizer, a guitar, and a bass. There were no cues between the actors on stage and the orchestra backstage that I could see. I’m not sure how they pulled that off.
The actors started off on the steps on each side of the theatre and proceeded to dance and sing while heading towards the stage. From the very beginning, there was a lot of movement on the stage. When the spotlight was on one or two main actors, the rest of the background actors would stay in the stark contrast of absolute silence so as to not take away from the focus on the moving main actors. The lighting was usually a faint light on the entire stage with a much brighter light on the actors who were singing at the time. If they were all singing at once, the entire stage was lit up brightly.
The theatre was surprisingly full. I noticed two small sections that were empty, but otherwise it was a full house. Most of the audience looked like family of the actors on stage, along with a large number of students. I’m sure there were a lot of people from our class in the audience. There was also a lot of applause at the end of each song. It seemed like the audience really appreciated the work that the actors put into the performance.
The theatre was quite small, which made everything very easy to hear. The small space reverberated everything well, but the acoustics worked so that you didn’t have a lot of echo afterward.
A musical has the ability to put a play to a tune. The dancing, songs, and speech were all there in this performance. The easy flow from one song to another kept it going at a fast pace and the small theatre made the actors very up close and personal.