"And it carries still the word of mouth problem ' I saw this great musical - its about these Siamese twins ...." about that point you've lost your sale..."
This was on everyone's lips the first time around, the supposed (or de facto) "ick factor" about the subject. That conjoined twins make people uncomfortable.
I'm not disagreeing her, just opening a discussion. What do we believe to be the source of the discomfort? May we be specific and graphic? Is it the thought of their (shared) sexuality? Of their biological functions in sync or lack thereof? Of the absence of privacy?
It intrigues me, because I notice how readily we line up to see the deformed Phantom woo a girl. Or watch a woman expose her breasts to The Elephant Man.
But two women with a mere piece of flesh between their hips puts people off their intermission cocktails?
I will remind us: in the original production, the concept was entirely stylized. The two women appeared separately at the top of the show and "formed" in front of us. It was Longbottom's stark and stunning conceit to make the show somewhat meta, that this group of performers assembled on bleachers were going to take us into this world and tell the story with a marked degree of stylization. And they did, with the audience imagination supplying a great deal of the specifics.
In this revisal, the suspension of disbelief is sought and maintained. Remarkably. And though I had already seen the production the Saturday before, I was startled watching the footage of the now infamous "opening night act ending." Unlike the original staging, the conjoined nature maintained solely by the actors and thus more controlled, Violet is almost dragged across the stage by Daisy in the tense, searing recitative material before the song proper. I was almost shocked at how vivid it seemed. And maybe for the first time -- the image of this woman pulling her sister with her, without negotiation, maybe inducing physical pain with the resistance -- I felt if not uncomfortable, fully aware of what the plight must've been like in moments when they disagreed.
It is brilliantly theatrical, because it is done so simply, but harrowing emotionally. Blown up on the screen in Times Square, if not off-putting, certainly startling. That's the only word I can land on safely.
Maybe for the first time I got -- if not the ick factor -- the true physical challenge, the sense of how sad and even tragic these lives had to have been. Maybe that is terrifying, a subtle reminder of the price paid for birth defects, deformity of any kind, who knows what issues come up?
The show is gorgeous, heartbreaking, everything everyone has written. But in that one moment -- when Daisy started downstage right without Violet's tacit agreement, I was shaken for the first time. Great theater, but maybe still unnerving on Broadway.
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