This UK premiere of the musical that flopped twice on Broadway arrives at the Southwark Playhouse, where it runs until 3 December 2016. Can Side Show be more of a success in London?
Guardian: ★★★ “You couldn’t wish for better casting, and if the show still fails to move as it should, the fault lies with a repetitive book, too many songs and the conflict between the subject matter and the Broadway musical.”
A Younger Theatre: “This is one worth seeing for its excellent cast and production values if not its core content.”
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Carn’s Theatre Passion: ★★★★ “this show delivers enormous heart navigating through their troubling story, proving that even when the world is against you, it’s good to have a friend by your side.”
The Stage: ★★★★ “Side Show casts a darkly insinuating and deeply compelling spell.”
Broadway World: ★★★★★ “This is top-quality West End stuff at a quarter the price.”
West End Whingers: “Hannah Chissick‘s production does what it says on its tin.”
Everything Theatre: ★★★ “Side Show is staged well and has high production values.”
Evening Standard: ★★★★ “Hannah Chissick directs with style, the ensemble makes for striking side show performers and Dearman and Pitt-Pulford, one of the future greats of musicals, are a good pairing.”
Jonathan Baz Reviews: ★★★★ “An uncommon musical infused with both uneasiness and joy, Side Show is a unique, rare experience that will stay with you long after the finale.”
The Gizzle Review: ★★★ “Hannah Chissick has provided the Southwark Playhouse with another successful UK revival of a little known musical. Yet in doing so, Side Show is exposed as more conventional than its cast of freaks would have you believe.”
The Upcoming: ★★★ “The music is (sometimes) catchy and Disney-esque, and the visuals are incredibly strong, with an unchallenging story to grasp and a simple moral core: an enjoyable evening.”
There Ought to be Clowns: “it still feels that it is Side Show as the main attraction that is problematic.”
Musical Theatre Review: ★★★★ “If it is flawed as a piece of theatre, it is hard to imagine Side Show being done much better than in this thought-provoking, and at times hypnotically absorbing, evening.”
The Reviews Hub: “Chissick captures the essence of Russell and Krieger’s work but substitutes what should be an avant garde piece with a middle of the road vision.”
The Times: ★★★ “though Henry Krieger and Bill Russell’s show goes down smooth in Hannah Chissick’s deluxe fringe revival, and excellent though Louise Dearman and Laura Pitt-Pulford are as the smiling, singing, joined-at-the-hip Daisy and Violet Hilton, Side Show never takes us far from Broadway life as we know it. It’s easy to consume but rarely surprising.”
West End Wilma: ★★★★ “All things considered SIDE SHOW’s positives well outweigh it’s negatives and is well worth going to see. So go look at the freaks.”
