Assassins – Enormously Entertaining, Scary Relevant,Ultimately Defanged
In 1990 when Assassins opened to mixed and negative reviews we were not suffering frequent mass killings to which the country seems to have become horrifyingly inured. Cries of civil liberty and references to the Constitution meant something entirely different. When the CSC production shut down at the start of the Pandemic, we had not experienced the January 6 insurrection or the recent on set shooting of Alec Baldwin’s film Rust. Due to the latter, we’re told in talk-back, director John Doyle decided to use recorded gun shots instead of blanks. He’d already defanged the usually show-stopping moment when a protagonist turns a gun on the audience.
Assassins is based on a play about a Vietnam Vet by Charles Gilbert, Jr. which featured quotes from historical murders and an opening scene set in a shooting gallery above which hung the sign: SHOOT THE PREZ AND WIN A PRIZE. Having secured permission to use the idea, Stephen Sondheim and John Weidman focused on the angry, delusional, disenfranchised 19th and 20th century assassins and would-be assassins of our American presidents. Today, the same attributes might describe too much of our tense, eruptive population. With no signs of guns coming under government control, Assassins is sadly even more relevant in 2021. Doyle hasn’t changed a line.
Steven Pasquale as John Wilkes Booth
The weathered theater floor is painted with an American flag. A large, presidential seal hangs from the balcony. This doubles as both the target and canvas for projected photos of the presidents and occasional scenic pieces (like an electric chair) not manifest below. (Projections Steve Channon) An excellent three piece band lead by Greg Jarrett is supplanted by musician/actors in red, white, and blue jumpsuits parading with protagonists. Though I sympathize with the need to double up, their brightly colored presence softens and/or distracts from content gravitas. Dark, comic vignettes may be the apogee of this iteration, but Doyle has also limited impact.
A “Proprietor” acts as sometime narrator and radio announcer. Eddie Cooper is not quite resonant enough in presence or voice to carry through-line solemnity. A “Balladeer” (Ethan Slater) with acoustic guitar fleshes out exposition and comments. At the top of the show, the motley group of assassins is given guns. When someone is shot, a marvelously symbolic ceremony is observed.
Will Swenson as Charles Guiteau
John Wilkes Booth (Steven Pasquale), run to ground with a broken leg and hiding in a barn, is determined to get his “indictment” on paper before facing surrounding law enforcement. (There’s no indication of location or the wound.) “What I did was to kill a man who killed my country,” he self-righteously sings, secure in the greater goal of ridding us of President Abraham Lincoln. Pasquale ably fills the role evolving into a malevolent influence. When the balladeer refers to him, Doyle has Booth tell him to “shut up” – somewhat mitigating the effect of sharp lyrics.
Other protagonists:
Charles Guiteau, assassin of President James Garfield, is represeted by Will Swenson’s maniacally giggling, captivating characterization of a man whose main dream was to become the ambassador to France. The actor wears Guiteau’s impermeable optimism like a coat. Leon Czolgosz assassinated President William McKinley. Brandon Uranowitz is totally credible as the accented immigrant who was inspired by Emma Goldman (Bianca Horn) to put anarchistic beliefs into action in the name of class equality. “They make us servants.”
Brandon Uranowitz as Leon Czolgosz
Giuseppe Zangara, attempted assassin of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, turned his anger, here partly due to congenital stomach ailment, towards the upper classes. Wesley Taylor manifests confusion and instability. Lee Harvey Oswald (Ethan Slater) is dramatized as a man goaded into killing President John F. Kennedy (instead of committing suicide) by John Wilkes Booth. Oswald declared himself a “patsy” when arrested. Polls show most Americans still don’t believe he committed the murder. Slater believably plays him as an innocent, viscerally tormented by whatever demons Booth represents.
Sara Jane Moore, who attempted to kill President Gerald Ford, (she missed twice), is inhabited with incisive comic skill by the wonderful Judy Kuhn who has to be having a great time. She mishandles a firearm with flair, target practices with a bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken and accidentally shoots her small dog. All this is Doyle vaudeville, but it’s Kuhn’s sense of human plausibility that makes it funny. She’s startled but undaunted when things go awry. Scenes with Tavi Gevinson as Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme are particularly splendid.(Assassins are often out of date together in vignettes. It’s disorienting in terms of history but works towards illuminating character.)
Tavi Gevinson as Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme and Judy Kuhn as Sara Jane Moore
Two would-be assassins were ‘in it’ to get attention from people about whom they obsessed. Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme was consumed by fantasies of Charles Manson, though her attempted assassination of President Gerald Ford was proffered as a statement against environmental abuse. (The gun didn’t go off.) Tavi Gevinson shows her as sweetly deranged. A good choice. John Hinkley Jr. (a solid, aptly nerdy Adam Chanler-Berat) stalked actress Jodie Foster, then wounded President Richard Nixon to “win (Foster’s) love, now and for all eternity.” “I’m unworthy of your love,” he sings with utter sincerity.
Before Hinkley, Samuel Byck had an elaborate plan to hijack a plane and “drop it on the White House” in hopes of killing President Richard Nixon. Not only were his threats public, however, but he picketed the White House in a Santa Claus suit with a sign demanding the government return his Constitutional rights. This resulted in his being caught before the plan reached fruition, though not before he killed two men. Andy Grotelueschen’s embodiment is one of the great highlights of the evening.
Andy Grotelueschen as Samuel Byck
“Most of the show is Brechtian in that we’re telling you something,” Doyle comments in the talk-back. “Many people don’t know who these assassins were.” (See primer above if you can get tickets.) This is the third in John Doyle’s trilogy of Sondheim presentations. It’s immensely entertaining and intermittently unnerving, but overall, intentionally I believe, lacks Sondheim and Weidman’s darkness. As both artists were involved, one can only wonder.
Costumes by Ann Hould-Ward and wigs by Charles G. Lapointe are just right. Sound design by Matt Stine and Sam Kusnetz is pristine.
Photos by Julieta Cervantes
Classic Stage Company presents
Assassins
Music and Lyrics by Stephen Sondheim
Book by John Weidman from an idea by Charles Gilbert Jr.
Through January 29, 2022
