By Jeanne Lieberman

In the good ole days Broadway was synonymous with matinee idols and leggy chorus girls. A haven for tired businessmen, bored housewives and a must for visiting clients.

Good looks were requisite for the stage, even for dramas, unless you were that anomaly, a unique talent like Fanny Brice, but even then it was kept on the light side –you were either good looking or a comic.

Take a look at Broadway circa 2014. A mega producer like Flo Ziegfeld would roll over in his grave.

Elephant Man

FREAKS!   EVERYWHERE ON BROADWAY

OK! How do you like your freaks?  Straight, no frills, but served up by a Hollywood movie star as in The Elephant Man starring Bradley Cooper, voted  the Sexiest Man On Earth by People magazine a few seasons ago?.

Or two unknown talented stars glammed up in sequins and feathers, eye filling production numbers, romantic subplots and glorious music, even special choreography a deux as in Sideshow?

 Guess which one is closing Jan 4^th.

 Sideshow                                                         Photos by Joan Marcus

Pound for pound, minute for minute I guarantee that of the audiences exiting both shows the musical will be more appreciated. Both stories are similar; lowborn, abandoned at birth, maltreated as attractions at freak shows, then rescued and elevated to societal success (Elephant man visited by royalty, Sideshow twins Vaudeville superstars).

Enter Bradley Cooper, his magnitude measured by the amount of barricades and horse police surrounding the theater at exit time. The play itself is slight, dry, long on scientific/moralistic debates over the politically correct management of the imbecile turned savant. Everything is stark, colorless and mostly humorless. The one risqué moment served by an underweight, overage actress baring her breasts for the deprived man for only moments until she is banished. His subsequent, anti climactic death occurring wordlessly and matter of factly (not a hint in the play about how that happened).

It is my experience that no matter whom the star, unless he is playing himself, after a few minutes as he slips into his part, that star power evaporates as we see just another actor. But Cooper’s appeal will overcome the otherwise obvious deficiencies of the production. Besides, success is a foregone conclusion as the play is a limited run (closing Feb 15). That takes care of that. And they are selling out at $200+ seats so producers can cut and run without a look back.

Despite being totally and creatively reworked, and spawning two touchingly powerful songs “Like Everyone Else” and especially “I Will Never Leave You” (which reduced me to unaccustomed tears in a theater) people didn’t come.

There is a clause in theater rental contracts whereby if a theater is not filled to a certain capacity for a defined length of time, the theater owner can take it back. I assume that is what happened. Despite critical acclaim and positive word of mouth (I do not know anyone who didn’t love it) Sideshow will close Jan. 4

Theater trivia: Elephant Man opened in the same theater as the original production. (Booth, 1979) 

Sideshow opened and closes the same time as its original. (October 1997 to January 3, 1998; previews October 2014 to January 4 2015) 

And some “freaks” are mental, like another headliner, the asperger's afflicted young man in The Curious Incident of the Boy and the Dog in the Night-time (which serves up, to my personal delight, a geometry lesson on your way out).

Don’t forget the year started with last spring’s The Cripple of Innishman and the hunchbacked Richard III. And the musical Next To Normal has a very devoted cult following.

Can’t get enough? The Hunchback of Notre Dame the musical, and a revival of Children Of A Lesser God are on their way!!!