Theatre review: Elegies for Angels, Punks and Raging Queens

It seems to be revived frequently enough but I hadn’t got round to seeing Elegies for Angels, Punks and Raging Queens until the Union’s current production by Bryan Hodgson. Bill Russell (book and lyrics) and Janet Hood’s (music) musical is described as a “song cycle,” although I’d put it much more firmly in “play with songs” territory – the musical numbers only occasionally interrupt what is for the main part a series of monologues by the dead. The show dates from 1989 but has apparently been regularly revised since because its subject matter hasn’t become as irrelevant as many think. That subject is of course HIV/AIDS, and the play takes its inspiration from the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt that was made in response to the fact that, at the time, the official response to victims remained to sweep them under the carpet. The quilt was (and is, as it continues to be added to,) an attempt by loved ones not just to record the names of those lost, but to reflect something of each unique personality as well.

Theatre review: Side Show

A 1997 musical with the dubious reputation of having been produced on Broadway twice and tanked both times, writer Bill Russell and composer Henry Krieger's Side Show finally arrives in the UK in the version from the 2014 revival, with additional book by Bill Condon. Based on the story of the real-life Hilton sisters who appeared in Tod Browning's Freaks, it opens with conjoined twins Daisy (Louise Dearman) and Violet (Laura Pitt-Pulford) as the star attraction in a freak show during the Depression. The show's owner Sir (Chris Howell) is also their legal guardian for life and essentially treats them as his property as well. When vaudeville impresario Terry (Haydn Oakley) visits the show he spots the twins' potential as performers, as well as the abusive situation they're in, and helps them mount a successful court case to be liberated from Sir. He does succeed in making them stars, for a while, and they also seem to find a chance at love, but their disability gets in the way of both in the end.