'Elephant Man' and 'Side Show'

But that beauty lasts for only a moment. Beside him, the image of a grotesquely deformed figure – half human, half animal – is projected on a screen. Little by little, before our disbelieving eyes, the beautiful form of Bradley Cooper twists, contracts, and contorts to match the image, until he’s grotesque beyond recognition.

The play is Bernard Pomerance’s Elephant Man, and the role that Cooper inhabits with dignity and humanity is Joseph Merrick (1862-1890) of Leicester, England, who was afflicted with neurofibromatosis, a devastating neurological abnormality that causes radical physical deformation. Rejected by his family, Merrick left school at 13, toiled in a workhouse, and then joined a traveling sideshow in order to support himself. Owing to his grotesquely swollen, deformed head and misshapen body, he was given the name reflected in the play’s title.

The patient as project

Pomerance’s story begins with a surgeon named Frederick Treves, who discovers Merrick and gives him refuge in a London hospital. Played by Alessandro Nivola with compassion and conviction, Treves befriends Merrick and devotes his career to integrating him into society while studying his rare disease. Treves goes so far as to recruit a well-known actress named Mrs. Kendal (Patricia Clarkson), who takes him on as a “project.”

The play ultimately becomes the parallel journey of Treves and Merrick, as they confront their respective crises of faith. “I sometimes think my head is so big because it is filled with dreams,” says Merrick, who becomes an artist and — thanks to Mrs. Kendal’s efforts — interacts with Victorian London’s upper classes. At one point, the Prince and Princess of Wales come to the hospital to meet him and shake his hand.

Gaining confidence, Merrick becomes a well-spoken, sensitive man, who finds joy in reading, writing, and making handicrafts. At the same time, he remains acutely naïve and vulnerable. In Pomerance’s semi-fictionalized version of his story, Mrs. Kendal actually makes physical overtures to Merrick. Treves sends her away, chiding Merrick: “Are you not ashamed? Don’t you know it is forbidden?” “Whose standards are they?” replies Merrick, crushed, denied the thing he longs for most of all, physical contact and love. The sound of Cooper’s cry in response to Mrs. Kendal’s touch — a mixture of shock, joy, and anguish — is still ringing in my ears.

Though granted a few years of happiness, Merrick’s deformities continued to increase; he died at 27. Treves was unable to cure him or to stave off the illness’s devastation. “What is the meaning of doing good?” Treves is left to wonder.

A theatrical wonder

Cooper’s transformation from glamorous movie star (Silver Linings Playbook, American Hustle) to deformed pariah is one of this season’s theatrical wonders. Cooper has always wanted to play the role (he saw the film as a boy and studied the role at the Actors Studio). It’s a punishing performance, involving painful physical contortion lasting almost two hours nightly. Yet Cooper embraces the challenge with such conviction and depth that you soon forget you’re watching the actor that People Magazine called “the sexiest man alive.”

In one of the play’s surprising scenes, a group of London’s élite surround Merrick, explaining to the audience the connection they each feel to him. “He’s like me,” says one. “No, he’s more like me,” counters another. Cooper himself refers to an “odd connection” he feels to Merrick. With these rare expressions of humanity, one finds glimmers of hope in people’s capacity for compassion and kindness.

Headline freaks

Over at the St. James Theatre, there’s another sideshow going on, based also on a true story. This time, it’s about a pair of British-born Siamese twins. “Come look at the freaks / They’ll haunt you for weeks,” goes the opening number, set in a carnival show. There, amongst the other “freaks” — the bearded lady, the three-legged man, the hermaphrodite — we meet Daisy and Violet Hilton, two “typical girls next door” (as another song goes), who are literally joined at the hip. Terry and Buddy, two young producers, hire them away from their cruel guardian/manager and set them up on a tour. Beautiful and talented singer/dancers, they quickly rise in popularity. Still, they wonder: “Who will love me as I am?” (the closing number of Act I.)

The plot thickens when Buddy proposes marriage to Violet, the more starry-eyed twin. As Terry promotes their wedding into a sensational publicity event, the truth of Buddy’s proposal is revealed. Meanwhile, Terry proposes marriage to Daisy (the realistic one), on the condition that the twins undergo a dangerous operation to separate them. The twins are of two minds on this issue, and therein lies the conflict of Act II.

Emily Padgett (Daisy) and Erin Davie (Violet) are spellbinding to watch. With their strong voices and heartfelt performances, they dance seamlessly through this two-acter, always conjoined, except during one magical dream sequence in which they imagine themselves separated. It’s both a heartbreaking and uplifting vision of the enduring tie of love that literally binds.

At the same time, Side Show has a distinctly dark Sondheim flavor (cf. Sweeney Todd and Assassins). Toward the end, the twins are approached by a Hollywood producer who wants to make their story into a movie. “What’s the name of our film?” the twins ask. “Freaks,” replied the producer, eliciting an audible gasp of protest from the audience.

“We’re God’s mistake,” Daisy says at one point. But the nobility of all of these characters — Daisy, Violet, Merrick — teaches us that God may have had a plan, after all.

Above right: Silverman, Padgett, Davie, and Hydzik in Side Show. (Photo by Joan Marcus, © Broadway.com)