Editor’s note: This is a re-print of the “Assassins” review that was published in The Denver Post on Sept. 8, 2005. The production is now being remounted by the Next Stage Theatre Company at the Aurora Fox Theatre. There have since been several cast changes; a complete current cast list follows this review. The ticket information at the end applies to the current production.
Everything is wrong in Stephen Sondheim’s deliberately disjointed musical revue “Assassins,” because something is clearly wrong with America.
Something is wrong when a musical gathers nine of our real and would-be presidential assassins and plops them in a limbo-like carny shooting gallery below a red, white and blue sign that invites you to step right up and “Shoot the Prez.”
Something is wrong with a cute chorus of murderers belting a quintessential Sondheim number, “Everybody’s Got the Right to Be Happy.” Something is wrong with John Wilkes Booth acting as the devil on Lee Harvey Oswald’s shoulder.
And something is wrong with Squeaky Fromme and Sara Jane Moore forming a “hippie and a housewife” comic duo to hunt down Gerald Ford as if they were Cagney and Lacey’s evil alter egos.
That everything is wrong in Sondheim’s incendiary, existential “hit-man” parade means the fearless little Next Stage Theatre gets it mostly right.
Sondheim and John Weidman’s confrontational and bizarrely funny musical explores the motives of America’s most brazen killers by use of intentional incongruities. And what could be more incongruous than actors playing killers singing from the operatic songbook of America’s best – and most difficult – songwriter?
These motives vary widely – from avenging the defeated South to trying to impress a movie star (Jodie Foster) or a madman (Charles Manson). But there are two commonalities – degrees of mad delusion and, more disturbingly, a shared notion that the American Dream was a massive sham. From Booth to anarchist (and environmentalist!) Leon Czolgosz to Nixon targeting Sam Byck, this rogue’s gallery, nearly half of them immigrants, have become so disillusioned that Sondheim even invokes Willy Loman, the literary embodiment of the failed American Dream.
So while “Assassins” makes no attempt to glorify these vicious freaks and geeks, this permeating feeling of rejection may strike some as uncomfortably recognizable. The difference is that these assassins see killing as their ticket to immortality. After all, Booth tells Oswald, people still remember that it was Brutus who killed Caesar 2,000 years later. “They will hate you with a passion,” he promises.
The most impressive thing about Gene Kato’s stirring production is that he is doing it at all. No one else has touched it around here for a decade. “Assassins” is proof-positive that musical theater can delve into deeply disturbing areas and still be funny and entertaining.
Kato has assembled a capable, fearless ensemble and a top-notch band, but this is his vision. Kato’s fingerprints are everywhere, from the direction to the complex set and sound designs.
The revue format allows each actor to shine, most evidently Brian Hutchinson in a star-making turn as Booth; Jenny Hecht and the great Jessica Clare as the guilty-pleasure duo of Fromme and Moore; Gregg Adams as Czolgosz singing “it takes a lot of men to make a gun”; Rich Hicks reading Byck’s oddly funny taped messages to Leonard Bernstein; and Todd Coulter as creepy to-the-core James Garfield nemesis Charles Guiteau.
Daniel Langhoff has the greatest challenge, doubling as Oswald and the enigmatic “balladeer.” Here is the musical’s greatest riddle. Is he a narrator who simply disappears? Is he one of these assassins or their moral antithesis? This is one incongruity the authors don’t clarify.
This production’s greatest weakness – and incongruity – may be Sondheim himself. Though this is not among his most memorable scores, it is one of his most difficult, leaving no margin for error. Sondheim has a way of exposing and amplifying the tiniest flaws in even a great singer’s range.
That we’re discussing the quality of the vocalists in a musical about assassins sounds oh so wrong. Then again, something is wrong when violence so permeates our nation’s history and yet our response is so often, “Hey, let’s put on a show.”
Theater critic John Moore can be reached at 303-954-1056 or jmoore@denverpost.com.
“Assassins”
MUSICAL / Next Stage Theatre Company / Written by Stephen Sondheim (music) and John Weidman (book) / Directed by Gene Kato / At the Aurora Fox, 9900 E. Colfax Ave. / Running time: 2 hours, 15 minutes / 7:30 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays through Aug. 18 (plus Aug. 6) / $18-$24 / (720-209-4105 or ).
2007 cast list
Balladeer/Oswald—————–Jeremy Sortore
John Wilkes Booth———–Brian Hutchinson
Charles Guiteau————————–Paul Page
Emma Goldman/Housewife—–Michelle Merz
Leon Czolgosz—————-Gregory J. Adams
Giuseppe Zangara————–David Kincannon
Lynette “Squeaky” Frome——–Jenny Hecht
Sara Jane Moore——————-Jessica Clare
Sam Byck——————————–Rich Hicks
John Hinkley————————-Tyler Collins
Proprietor——————————Ken R. Paul
Ensemble————————-John Day-Richter, Adam Brodner and Kirsten Krieg
