Theater of the Freaks

Freak shows have a broad appeal. Like rubber neckers who look at the scene of a car crash, it’s a fascinating insight into the world of deformities, and more often than not, depravity.

Theatre Vertigo’s current run of Freakshow, about yes, a circus freak show, is at its best when it takes its characters and situations seriously, and compels the audience to do the same. For a majority of the production that is exactly what the actors do, playing sad characters, such as the Amalia, Woman With No Arms or Legs, Judith, the dog-faced girl who is Amalia’s keeper, the Pinhead (a man with an extremely small head) and the Human Salamander, an adolescent boy who grew gills while we was immersed in water.

We see these characters living out their lives confined to a place that makes them a spectacle, yet yearning for real relationships with true emotions, not the tricks and fantasies that make up their occupations.

The play keeps the audience riveted right from the first monologue, opening with the Woman with No Arms or Legs on her pedestal. She addresses the audience with something along the line of “I bet you are wondering if I have ever had sex.”

As crude as an opener this may seem, Amy Newman, who gives the strongest performance of the bunch, plays the part so cool, with a detachment to her situation, and a “tell-it-like-it-is” attitude that you can’t help but be on her side, after the shock of seeing such a person subsides. She is a sordid twist on the Roman stock character of a courtesan with a heart of gold. She also stays in the same place the entire play, with spotlights going on and off at the times she speaks. It is quite a feat.

This is where Freakshow and director Tom Moorman shine. The actors are able to take their roles seriously in the physical requirements needed to portray truth about the characters. For example, the Human Salamander, played well by Mario Calcagno, has a full-size tank in which he stays for most of the production. The Pinhead, portrayed by Nathan Gale, is locked in a cage the entire time. The set design conveys the confinement of these characters and helps bring about their self-actualization as circus freaks.

What is sorely missing though is any sort of stable plot. Different elements of back-story and relationships (such as the Woman with No Arms and Legs being in love with the Pinhead) are introduced but never developed nor given any kind of adequate conclusion. That added with disrupting lightening and sound at various times throughout the performance, makes for some confusion. 

It also seemed as though every monologue ran a little too long. What could have easily been explained through dialogue was instead given undue gravitas through an undue spotlight. This idea was sealed in the last minutes of the play, when Mr. Flip, the owner of the circus played by Garland Lyons, is speaking about the end of the show, yet it isn’t as gripping as one would hope for a finale.

The conclusion becomes sort of a cop-out, with nothing really resolved and an ending, while moving (the circus lights on fire, and is displayed with a mini-replica of a circus tent set on fire by the freaks as the lights go down) does not exactly wrap up loose ends well enough to make up for its uneven story. Like the saying goes, “Broadway is full of first acts.”

Freakshow is ultimately a well-acted performance with a bumpy story. However, just like almost all real freak shows, you can’t help but want to take a look.

http://www.theatrevertigo.org/ for more info.