Side Show Analysis

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The name of the Broadway musical that I chose is Side Show. The show opened on November 17, 2014 and had its last show on January 4, 2015. The overall production of the show was $7.8 million, which was the typical cost of a Broadway musical production. The weekly cost was about $539,000. The musical is about real-life conjoined twins Daisy and Violet Hilton. The story is about a pair of conjoined twins, who were called “freaks”, who left the sideshow business for a vaudeville career. Their search for survival and love through both high and low points in their career are also shown in this musical. The revival of the 1997 version is considered to be good because it changed many individuals perspective of being “a freak”. According to Charles Isherwood “Being a freak is virtually the new normal…The musical by Bill Russell and Henry Krieger, about conjoined twins searching for love and fame, or maybe just a…show more content…
Their biological mother saw them as a punishment for having them out of wedlock, so she sold them to a woman named Mary Hilton. She placed them on display in the back room of a British pub where they could be examined by anyone willing to pay the price of admission. Originally denied entry into the United States due to their condition rendering them "medically unfit" for access, Mary Hilton created a media frenzy that mounted pressure on local authorities until they finally granted the twins passage. Before this happened the Hilton twins were constantly physically and emotionally by their “auntie” and her “sirs’”. Myer Myers (a balloon salesman from Australia), took over the care of the sisters when their "Auntie" passed. The twins never had a normal childhood or viewed themselves as children, they saw themselves as walking dollar signs and as property instead of as normal human beings. “In the 1920's, when the girls were in their teens, they were placed on stages with vaudeville legends, appearing on the same bill as Charlie Chaplin and tap dancing with Bob

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