50 Favourite Musicals: 31: ASSASSINS (1990) (Stephen Sondheim)

The 50 shows that have stood out down the years and, as we get up among the paint cards, the shows that have become the cast recording of my life:

First performed: 1990, Playwrights Horizons, US
First seen by me: 1992, Donmar Warehouse, London

Productions seen: four

Score: Stephen Sondheim
Book: John Weidman

Plot:  In a funfair, a shooting-range proprietor calls eight men and women to try their luck at his stall.  They are revealed to be eight misfits who attempted - and in some cases succeeded - in assassinating United States Presidents.

Five memorable numbers: EVERYBODY'S GOT THE RIGHT, THE GUN SONG / THE BALLAD OF CZOLGOSZ, UNWORTHY OF YOUR LOVE, THE BALLAD OF BOOTH, THE BALLAD OF GUITEAU

The collaborations between Stephen Sondheim and John Weidman always give us the unexpected: the coerced opening up of Japan to Western trade in PACIFIC OVERTURES, and the ways to make and lose fortunes in early 20th Century America in ROAD SHOW; but their most avant-garde and controversial musical remains ASSASSINS, a show that challenges it's audience to at least understand four Presidential assassins and five would-be ones.  Short dramatic and black comedy scenes are glued together by Sondheim's score which encompasses styles of Americana music to devastating effect.  Weidman's book presents the assassins' warped manifestos and expose them to be disenfranchised loners who realized that if someone has power and fame then a way to get some of that is to be the person who kills them.  They gather together from across history: John Wilkes Booth, Giuseppe Zangara, Leon Czolgosz, Charles Guiteau, John Hinckley, Lynette 'Squeaky' Fromme and Sarah Jane Moore.  Weidman gives two non-musical scenes to the insane rantings of Samuel Byck, on his way to fly a hijacked plane into Richard Nixon's White House and - in the musical's most chilling scene - the assassins emerge from the shadows of the Texas School Book Depository to make Lee Harvey Oswald realise his destiny  Sondheim's score constantly surprises with it's musical sang-froid - Hinkley and Fromme sing a Carpenters-style love song but with a chilling aspect as they are singing of their deranged love for Jodie Foster and Charles Manson; Guiteau performs a minstrel-style cakewalk as he capers up the scaffold stairs; a Souza march is utilized to counterpoint the bitter ravings of Zangara from the electric-chair that there are no photographers present; a barbershop quartet harmonize over their guns; and the show's narrator, The Balladeer, sings a tongue-twisting bouncy song to illustrate Czolgosz's shuffling progression to the head of a queue to shake hands with William McKinley - and shoot him.  Interestingly The Balladeer presents an echo of Sondheim's previous musical INTO THE WOODS as three-quarters through each show, the characters turn on their narrator, disagreeing with his version of events - here the result is the barnstorming "Another National Anthem" as the assassins show their actions as warped versions of searching for The American Dream.  With it's small cast, minimal set and relatively small number of songs, ASSASSINS has been seen in a few fringe revivals in London - not all of them successful - but my fondest memory is of Sam Mendes' UK premiere production at the Donmar, with excellent, idiosyncratic performances by David Firth (Booth), Louise Gold (Moore), Ciaran Hinds (Byck), and Henry Goodman, unforgettable as the insane Guiteau.  Interestingly, it was for the Donmar production that Sondheim added a song after the Lee Harvey Oswald scene "Something Just Broke" which gives a voice to ordinary people at their shock and sadness of Kennedy's killing; an attempt to re-balance the show which I can understand but think it rather undercuts the show's ominous power.  Those fringe revivals that felt too obvious is why ASSASSINS is placed lower than it ideally should be in my list.

Here is the show's final number, performed by the 2004 Broadway cast including Neil Patrick Harris, Michael Cerveris and Denis O'Hare, at the Tony Awards where it won five awards.  The song, a reprise of the opening number "Everybody's Got The Right" is the most Broadway-sounding song in the score but reiterates Sondheim and Weidman's contention that the assassins' saw their actions as being some sort of unalienable right...  The original 1991 cast recording remains sublime.

The 7 Shows of Xmas 7: ASSASSINS

Well, we made it Constant Reader… end of 2014 and here I am at the last show at Christmas.  I couldn't have done it without you.

The last show of 2014 was in one of my favourite theatres and was one of my favourite shows.  If maybe not in this production...

The show, written in 1990, was a departure for Sondheim - in a career already defined by departures from the norm - in that it was a non-linear, ensemble piece set in an imagined fairground shooting gallery, where the nine living and dead people who attempted or succeeded in killing the President of the United States gather to relive the circumstances that brought them to their murderous deed.  

Gathered together across the years they seek to justify their actions as Sondheim's score and John Weidman's book seek to understand how their twisted logic and sense of failure led them to do what they did.  It's a musical that is also a scathing polemic on the curdled idea of The American Dream and Sondheim willingly takes a backseat in several major scenes giving Weidman the space to explore the characters without the necessity for a song to interrupt the flow.

One by one they step forward into the spotlight that they felt was denied them: John Wilkes Booth, vainglorious actor who shot Lincoln to avenge the South; Italian immigrant Giuseppe Zangara who attempted to shoot Roosevelt in his hatred for the capitalists who he had to slave for ruining his physical and mental health; would-be Anarchist Leon Czolgosz who shot President McKinley to also avenge the masses; deranged Charles Guiteau who shot President Garfield because he did not receive the post of Ambassador to France which he felt he was entitled to.

John Hinckley who attempted to shoot Ronald Reagan so Jodie Foster would notice him; misfit Samuel Byck who attempted to crash a plane into Nixon's White House; Manson acolyte Lynette Frome who attempted to kill Gerald Ford to publicise Manson's world vision and Sara Jane Moore a confused woman desperate to do something radical to be noticed.  And the ninth, of course, is Lee Harvey Oswald who, in Weidman's chilling scene, is persuaded by the others to be the assassin that will define them all.  If the greatest ambition for any American is to rise to be President, how much more famous is it to be the person who kills them?

It's all there in Weidman's excellent book and Sondheim's glorious score which pastiches various American musical forms: rousing Souza marches, folk ballads, high-stepping cakewalk, pop ballads - sadly the ubiquitous director Jamie Lloyd obviously feels that the material is not clear enough and has given us a production which starts so ramped-up and overwrought that it swamps the material.  This leads to several of the cast giving performances that are almost grotesque in their clanging over-emphasis.

Soutra Gilmour's threatening and creepy fairground set also overdoes the emphasis and again suffocates the work's quiet despair.  Mind you, it provided an amusing moment at the start when the ghastly Proprietor popped out of the mouth of a large papier-mâché clown's head and the woman next to it shrieked loudly in alarm.  Oh and I did love Gilmour's visual trick of showering red ticker-tape on the 'successful' assassins.

Ah, the Proprietor.  He is there to introduce the assassins and to play various characters within their scenarios.  But here the role is hideously over-played by Simon Lipkin who literally gasps the opening number "Everybody's Got The Right" while heavy-breathing through his mouth.  What the fuck was director Lloyd thinking about?  Sondheim's lyrics went for nothing as he sounded like someone trying to sing while having an asthmatic seizure.

His truly ghastly performance is mirrored in an over-the-top performance from Stewart Clarke who bellows his lines in "How I Saved Roosevelt" so much I was over-the-moon when he was finally electrocuted.  Sadly this air of high-pitched desperation affected Catherine Tate's woozy Sara Jane Moore which she played as if to an audience of hard-of-hearing patrons in the Albert Hall.  It was a grotesque performance of a woman who was anything but, just very, very confused.

Again the heavy-breathing-through-the-mouth acting style affected Harry Morrison who played John Hinckley as hysterically as a drag act who had just had his wig pulled off.  This was shown off to alarming effect in his duet with Carly Bawden's Lynette Frome.  Sondheim's glorious subversion of the typical musical love song has Hinckley and Frome singing of their unworthiness of someone's love - only this time it's to pictures of Jodie Foster and Charles Manson.  Morrison's over-wrought delivery was instantly forgotten when Bawden started singing - a pure, soprano voice just singing… a rarity in this production.

However, it was not all ghastly - some performers fought through the unimaginative staging to make an impression.  US actor Aaron Tveit was an impressive Booth, his preening vanity sitting on him like an ever-present opera cloak and he shone in the afore-mentioned Lee Harvey Oswald scene.  The always dependable Jamie Parker played The Balladeer, the musical's voice of reason who counterpoints the assassin's protestations with asides on how they didn't change anything, they didn't get what they wanted etc.  However when the assassins attack him during their clarion call "Another National Anthem", he emerges from the scrum dressed as Lee Harvey Oswald, ready to be seduced by Booth into his moment of fate. 

Andy Nyman was fun as the clearly deranged Charles Guiteau and made the most of his solo cakewalk number, clapping and dancing his way up the gallow stairs, he even breaks out dancing in mid-air after his lengthy hanging!  I also liked David Roberts as the confused and lonely Leon Czolgosz, he was particularly good in the small but telling scene with Emma Goldman where he struggles to make a connection with a real radical visionary.

As I said, Carly Bawdon was excellent as the angrily obsessed Lynette Frome and at the other end of the spectrum, Mike McShane was blistering fierce as Sam Byck who has two monologues in which we see an angry, disturbed man slowly coming apart.  The interesting thing is that Weidman does give Byck genuine concerns - what Weidman and Sondheim are saying is that it's right to get angry at injustices, it's how you react that is important.

Neil Austin's lighting design was, as always, almost a star in itself and the orchestra gave the score a vibrancy not always echoed by the cast.

I came out of the theatre shattered at the sheer intensity of it all so I guess Jamie Lloyd would say he succeeded but I would seriously debate that.

2014… Thank You and Good Night!

What's the best way to spend the hottest day of the year Constant Reader? How's about sitting in a 40-seat theatre under a railway arch in Southwark? It works for me - especially if I am seeing one of my favorite Sondheim musicals.But is ASSASSINS a musical? Not in the usual sense of the word. There are not many musicals where one of the leading characters will have two intensely powerful monologues with no solo number to 'cap' them but then the world of ASSASSINS is unpredictable, just as it should be.

Unsurprisingly the show has never found the acclaim it deserves on the Great White Way, no doubt in part to the unflinching light it shines at that most absurd of concepts The American Dream. If allegedly anyone can find fame as the President then surely it follows that anyone can find fame as the President's killer. It's not unusual to say that a Sondheim score haunts you but what I love about ASSASSINS is that John Weidman's morally-questioning book is as powerful and a true equal to the music. Although not without it's flaws one thing this production pointed out strongly is the role of the Balladeer, here played pointedly by Nolan Frederick. As the audience's unofficial guide he is the one who frames the musical numbers of the show's 'historical' assassins - John Wilkes Booth, Charles Guiteau, Leon Czolgosz and Giuseppe Zangara while the 'modern' failed assassins - Sam Byck, Lynette Fromme, Sara Jane Moore and John Hinckley are mostly given scenes by themselves.Towards the end though as the Assassins and the Balladeer argue during the song ANOTHER NATIONAL ANTHEM, the Assassins force the Balladeer from the stage and by doing so remove the show's moral compass... which leads into the wonderfully-written scene where the Assassins seduce and convince the suicidal Lee Harvey Oswald to the course of action that does indeed unify them finally as a group of people to be taken seriously and not just disparate, sad, random acts. Personally I like to believe that's what really happened in the Texas School book depository!

This also echoes the actions of the fairy-tale characters in Sondheim's previous show INTO THE WOODS who sacrifice the onstage narrator to the avenging widow of The Giant because they don't like his superior tone.As I said the weather on the day we went was sweltering and the confusing and cramped front-of-house area at the Union - seemingly the alleyway between two buildings - didn't bode well for having to spend the next 110 minutes cooped up inside a small auditorium. Thankfully when once inside the space was deliciously air-conditioned although we did have to sit in the cinema-style seats which wobbled alarmingly on a podium - especially when the not-onstage cast sat on the back of it.

As I said the production was not without it's flaws. The scene changes were frustratingly slow for a show that is supposed to keep hitting you with scenes and songs which stalled the momentum of the scene that had gone before and the choreography for THE BALLAD OF CZOLGOSZ - one of my favourite numbers - seemed needlessly tricksy and prop-heavy - especially as the stage directions are in the song - you just need a line of people queuing up to shake hands with President McKinley! Although I am all for atmosphere, the loud blasts of dry ice from behind us were annoyingly diverting and dissipated above our heads before reaching the stage anyway. There were also one or two dodgy voices in the ensemble although I really liked the idea of having them as presidential bodyguards and I thought their singing of Sondheim's added song SOMETHING JUST BROKE - in which we hear reactions to the killings from ordinary people down the ages - was particularly fine.

Despite all these I have to say this is one of the most enjoyable small-scale Sondheims I have seen. Michael Strassen's production is gloriously unrelenting and he has elicited fine performances from some key members of his cast. Glyn Kerslake and John Barr are two actors who I know more for their concert or cd appearances than for any stage work but here they both gave eye-catching performances as the vain, charismatic Booth and the clearly insane Guiteau, Barr making the most of THE BALLAD OF GUITEAU in which Sondheim used the actual poem that Guiteau recited on the gallows, as he cakewalked and cavorted nearer and nearer to the rope even with his legs tied together.

Adam Jarrell was an impassioned and sympathetic Leon Czolgosz especially in his scene with the brusque but well-meaning Emma Goldman (Lisa Stokke) and Nolan Frederick was fine as The Balladeer.Just out of interest, I wonder how anarchist Emma Goldman feels in the afterlife about featuring in two Broadway musicals - this and RAGTIME? I'm sure it makes up for the fact she was deported from America in 1917 eh?Leigh McDonald was hugely enjoyable as Sara Jane Moore, the hapless assassin who brings her dog and small son to where she is going to assassinate Gerald Ford. McDonald played her with an attractive zaniness and a genuine sense of desperation.

However the most out-there performance was Nick Holder as the paranoid Samuel Byck who in his two long and engrossing monologues took us deep into the heart of the Assassins' psyche - the irrational sense of grievance, the anger at failed dreams, the realisation that nothing changes whoever is in power. Holder was frightening, hilarious, grotesque and tragic within seconds of each other.What I loved so much about this production is that unlike the recent trend of small-scale shows this one had musicians - yes, SIX real musicians - who got on with playing the score leaving the actors free to get on with their job.

This remarkable work which showcases one of Sondheim's most gloriously theatrical scores will continue to linger long in the mind and will always intrigue me to revisit it's dark carnival of killers.