Assassins
Stephen Sondheim (Music & Lyrics); John Weidman (Book)
Thus opens Assassins, one
of the more controversial musicals ever to be staged and one that even
companies prolific in producing Stephen Sondheim works often avoid
producing. With music and lyrics by the
musical genius Sondheim and book by John Weidman, Assassins first opened off-Broadway in 1990 and then took a full
fourteen years before finally making it to the Great White Way, pulling in five
Tonys. That most of its key principals
are the men and women who attempted – and sometimes succeeded – in
assassinating American presidents and that it is also jam-packed with plenty of
guffaw-producing humor, clever parody, and sharply targeted sarcasm makes Assassins a somewhat bold choice for any
theatre to stage. But clearly the packed
opening night crowd voted their hearty approval with their laughter and their
frequent, sustained applause of Bay Area Musicals’ current choice to produce Assassins as they reveled in the stories
unfolding before them of this elite group of America’s greatest non-heroes, of
America’s most vile set of villains.
Assassins explores
the motivations of these notorious people, at least half of whom most Americans
would no longer recognize their names.
In the course of the time-tripping musical, the key characters interact
with each other in a series of encounters that are of course impossible to have
happened except in a script. These
gatherings are interspersed with reenactments of the moments before and after
their attempted assassinations, including the final demise of several of the
perpetrators. And all is done with music
that Sondheim has created to echo tunes and genres full of all-American styles
of the times each assassin lived. That
there is a Yankee-Doodle, patriotic feel to many of the songs makes the musical
and its content all the more unnerving and yet intriguing.
Any Sondheim musical is challenging for most actors due to
the word-packed lyrics that are often to be sung at a speed just short that of
lightning, with vocal ranges required from deepest to highest notes. The Bay Area Musicals (BAM) cast assembled by
Director Daren A.C. Carollo to a person is more than able to excel in
delivering every twist and turn of the tunes and lyrics that the composer lays
before them. Further, this cast excels
in convincingly presenting through their acting abilities the strangeness,
anger, loneliness, and often sheer insanity of this assembled group emerging
from some of our national history’s darkest moments. All display in note-worthy manner the
accents, personal traits, and disturbing psychological issues of each would-be
assassin. Each also ably sells their
spotlighted moments in ways for audience members not only to take note of the
quirky, disturbing villains, but also the targeted presidents and the curious
and/or stunned bystanders they often portray on the side.
In this production, the director has chosen to accentuate and
even exaggerate the humor embedded in the script with exquisitely timed moments
like that of President Ford’s characteristic tripping to the ground just before
an assassin bungles her failed assassination attempt. The omni-presence of the clown-faced Proprietor
(Eric Neiman) watching from the side over assassinations with his ever-present
painted smile is an eerie but inspired choice by Mr. Carollo that graphically
draws our attention to the fine line Sondheim is drawing between the horror and
the humor of these historically grievous and momentous events. And just when we in the audience are caught
up in a moment of laughter (all the time not sure we really should be laughing,
given the subject matter), all of a sudden one or more guns point directly at
us, often shutting us up completely.
With his acoustic guitar in hand, Sage
Georgevitch-Castellanos is a young, clean-cut-looking narrator who guides us as
Balladeer through the dark tales with All-American-sounding songs sung in a
gosh-darn, upbeat manner. His Yankee
Doodle Boy approach -- complete with occasional whistling and a smile and
personality that could sell the Brooklyn Bridge – is in stark contrast to the
ballads he sings as he tells the backgrounds, attempts to make meaning, and
even acts as provocateur of various assassins such as Lincoln’s Booth,
McKinley’s Czolgosz, and Garfield’s Guiteau.
The Balladeer is often joined by the assassin he sings
of. He suggests to John Wilkes Booth
that maybe “you’d merely had a slew of bad reviews” as a possible motive for the
Lincoln assassination. But reverberating
in a deep voice echoing his inherent stage sophistication and Southern manners,
Derrick Silva as Booth goes to great pains to explain, “They will understand it
[i.e., his motive] later – the country was not what it was.” With a quivering lip and eyes wild with
conviction of his own self-truth, a dying Booth tells the Balladeer, “What I
did, I did well, and I did it for my country.”
Other assassinators are no less apologetic as they interact
with the balladeer. DC Scarpelli as Leon
Czolgosz is wild-eyed with anger and moves like a stalking predator as he moves
up a line waiting to greet President McKinley at the 1901 Pan American
Exposition. Terrence McLaughlin also
brings a rabid voice and a graphic countenance – dripping in anger and without
regret -- as he sits waiting death in the electric chair for his attempt at
bringing FDR down, arguing that he is an American in the New Deal world of
Roosevelt who has nothing -- including “no care, no more.”
Peter Budinger is the disillusioned, man-of-many-trades
Charles Guiteau who is crazed in his determination to get Garfield to make him
French ambassador. Mr. Budinger is
particularly startling and memorable as he sings “I Am Going to the Lordy” – a
poem the killer actually vocalized before his hanging. Alternating a slow, gospel dirge with a brisk
beat full of optimism, his Guiteau looks to heaven with a shining face as he
light-foot dances up the steps to the gallows.
Jessica Fisher and Kelli Schultz are often like characters
out of a 1970s sitcom as they portray two would-be Gerald Ford assassins, Sara
Jane Moore and Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme respectively – both who fortunately
totally bungled their attempts. On a
park bench scene where they practice in cackling laughter gun shots aimed a
smiling Colonel Sanders on a chicken carton, the two share their crazed pasts
and further howl in sounds straight from an insane asylum about their discovery
of a shared association with Sharon Tate’s murderer, Charlie Manson.
Other bizarre moments abound that cause both the hilarity
and creepiness factors of this musical to go off the scale. In barbershop quartet harmonies right out of
a county fair scene, Assassins Czolgosz, Booth, Guiteau, and Moore sing in “The
Gun Song,” “Your little finger can slow them down to a crawl, show them all,
big and small, it took a little finger no time to change the world.” Hunching over a guitar and singing through a
nervously twitching mouth, John Hinkley (who injured President Reagan) is also
joined by “Squeaky” in a duet where each sings, “I am nothing” (in “Unworthy of
Your Love”) to their idols, Jodie Foster and Charles Manson. Soloing and then blending
in tones creepily sweet and innocent, each ends with the haunting regret, “I am
unworthy of your love ... darling.”
As the man everyone in the audience has waited most of the
production to see, Lee Harvey Oswald finally appears, played in this production
by the same actor who up to this point has represented the All-American Dream,
the Balladeer (another directorial stroke of genius). As Oswald, Sage Georgevitch-Castellanos is now
small and thin in white t-shirt and jeans, looking more boy than man and like someone
who would likely go unnoticed in a crowd (rather than about to become a notorious
icon for the ages). Sitting alone and
depressed, he is visited first by a coaxing, smooth-talking Booth and then by
the entire entourage of other, encouraging assassins – those before him and
those to come after him (even some to be inspired by him). His initial reluctance in this musical’s
telling to pull the trigger on Kennedy versus on himself is
spine-tingling.
The post-shooting images on the projection screen of Jackie
leaning over the President’s body while the onstage Oswald blankly watches in
disbelief as his own shadow falls acorss the same screen is enough to send
chills down the spine and tears to the eyes.
As the entire ensemble sings “Something Just Broke,” individuals of
every societal sort remember where they were when they first heard of the
assassination – something many in the audience surely are also doing. The humor that up to now has snuck into
almost every part of the musical is totally absent in a scene still raw for
many watching some fifty-plus years from its actual occurrence.
Director Carollo has created a set design that smacks of a
country fair’s sideshow as each historical villain has a framed doorway to
enter surrounded by sparkling lights.
Ryan Weible’s lighting design accentuates this design, with special touches
provided as each individual steps up to re-shape history. The lighting also makes full use of shadows
and harsh lights on faces to accentuate the monsters lurking among us.
Julie Indelicato takes advantage of the Alcazar Theatre’s
size and setting to create a sound design that ensures each of Sondheim’s many
lyrical words and notes are clearly understood and that enables the realism of
gun shots and other effects to be believed.
Brooke Jennings introduces us to several eras of time, personalities
strange and dark, and persona historically well-known and unknown through an
incredible array of costumes and wigs (all further complemented by the
properties created by Devon LaBelle).
Finally, the choreography of Matthew McCoy that calls to mind everything
from traveling Vaudeville to B’Way stage shows and the outstanding musical
direction of Jon Gallo and his orchestra of eight round out this incredible
creative team.
For any theatre, Stephen Sondheim’s Assassins is a monumental undertaking just because of its subject
matter, much less the normal challenges of a Sondheim score and set of
lyrics. In 2017 when our elected
president repeatedly as a candidate encouraged his Second Amendment proponents
to use their gun rights to voice their opinions, the subject matter of the
musical is even more startling and unsettling.
Sondheim and Weidman leave us with the words of the Balladeer that we
can only hope that those leading our country and those enthralled by those leaders
will pay heed: “Angry men don’t write
the rules, and guns don’t right the wrongs.”
Rating: 5 E
Assassins continues
as a Bay Area Musicals production through March 19 at the Alcazar Theatre at
650 Geary Street, San Francisco. Tickets
are available online at http://www.bamsf.org/assassins/for performances Thursdays and Fridays at 8 p.m. and Saturdays at 2 p.m. and 8 p.m.
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