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From
the author of the original Assassins
The Sondheim
Review; Vol. 7 No 2. 2000
By Charles Gilbert
Every program
for Assassins contains the credit line "Assassins is based
on an idea by Charles Gilbert, Jr." Here, Gilbert, associate
professor of theater arts and head of the musical theater program
at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, writes about his
own musical, the basis for the work of Stephen Sondheim and John
Weidman.
A phone call
from a friend tipped me off when Meryle Secrest's book was published
two years ago. "Did you see the new Sondheim biography?"
he asked. "Take a look at page 361." Seeing my name
in that account of the genesis of the Sondheim-Weidman musical
Assassins, I felt slightly giddy at the thought of having become
a part of theatrical history, a minor supporting character whose
story was now a footnote to a great man's career.
Back in November
1977, I was a young director and composer fresh out of grad school,
searching for a subject for an original work that would enable
me to bring together many of the elements of the musical theater
that excited me. Among the then-current musicals that had me in
its thrall was Pacific Overtures, a work whose fusion of theatrical
inventiveness and intellectual penetration seems to me the very
model of a modern major musical.
Browsing in
the stacks of the Carnegie Library in Pittsburgh, I found a collection
of biographical sketches of different individuals who had either
killed or attempted to kill an American president. The book contained
bits of verse, journal excerpts, courtroom testimony and other
fragments in which the assassins, in their own words, attempted
to explain what led them to commit their crimes. My senses tingled
as I turned the pages: This was something big.
I drafted
a short proposal for William Turner, artistic director of Theater
Express, a Pittsburgh "alternative" theater for whom
I was working as music director. With Bill's encouragement, and
under his direction, my idea grew to a quirky, full-length musical
entitled Assassins, produced by Theater Express, first in a workshop
and then in a mainstage production in 1979, funded in part by
a grant from the Ford Foundation's New American Plays program.
"Step
right up!" shouted a sideshow barker. "Hit the Prez
and win a prize!" In a memorable scene from that production,
the stage was transformed into a surrealistic shooting gallery,
where politicians, secret agents and bystanders jerked around
the stage like figures in a demented cuckoo-clock. Gathered at
the shooting gallery were many characters whose names will be
familiar to those who know the Sondheim-Weidman Assassins: John
Wilkes Booth, Charles Guiteau, Leon Czolgosz, Giuseppe Zangara
and Squeaky Fromme were included, along with Arthur Bremer (whose
memorable line "My penis made me do it!" is from a poem
in his book An Assassin's Diary), Sirhan Sirhan and John Schrank.
Not present were John Hinckley, who hadn't happened yet, and Sam
Byck, who somehow escaped my attention.
Also conspicuously
(but significantly) absent from the cast was Lee Harvey Oswald,
whose desperate act on that infamous November morning remains
a vivid memory for many Americans. Unquestionably, in any drama
about assassination in America, Oswald has to be the star, and
though he failed to appear among the dramatis personae in my musical,
his story turned out to be the very heart of the piece. I decided
to create a fictional assassin modeled on Oswald, and to use the
events leading up to that momentous gunshot as the narrative through-line
for my musical. My fictional assassin was a down-and-out drifter
caught up in a web of conspiracy, which gave me the chance to
indulge in ironic paranoid fantasies, like a chorus of G-men singing
"We Serve The Hoove." In exploring the sentimental,
sympathetic side of this melancholy character, I also wrote some
of the most heartfelt material in the musical, including a stanza
that still pleases me more than twenty years later:
Sometimes
it's hard to fight the feeling of falling.
The edge is appallingly near,
As days and dreams and dollars disappear.
Reading them
with the benefit of hindsight, the reviews for Assassins in Pittsburgh
seem strangely prophetic. In the Tribune (January 23, 1979), Evey
Lehner wrote, "Gilbert has come up with an idea for a theatrical
experience that is innovative and could turn into a remarkable
piece, with work."
The challenge
of finding a theatrical form that could successfully convey the
thematic richness of its subject and the colorful personalities
of its characters proved to be too difficult for this tyro dramatist,
even though I continued to work on the piece after its Pittsburgh
premiere. In the early 1980s, I heard about a new program sponsored
by the Musical Theater Lab in New York designed to pair up novice
musical theater writers with mentors, and I sent a copy of the
revised script of Assassins as part of the supporting materials
for my application. Though I was chosen as a finalist for the
program, it died aborning, and the script and tape that arrived
by return mail went onto the shelf as I turned my attention to
other matters.
Shuffling
inattentively through my mail on a spring afternoon in 1988, I
doubt I was looking for the letter that would change my life.
Still, there was no mistaking the signature at the bottom of the
page. It was a letter from Stephen Sondheim, inquiring about the
status of Assassins and wondering if I would consider letting
him write a work based on my idea. Even now, the word "improbable"
seems far too lame a description for this turn of events. His
intended collaborator? The same John Weidman with whom he wrote
Pacific Overtures, the work that had so inspired me a decade ago.
I assented and they set to work.
My admiration
for the skill and imagination of the authors continued to grow
as I watched their new musical take shape. Though Sondheim politely
declined my offer to collaborate with him on the piece, he and
Weidman seemed interested in my comments and we discussed their
musical at several points during its development. In particular,
I recall a letter I wrote in which I questioned the fact that
the "bystanders" were not heard from after the middle
of the play, which seemed to skew the piece toward the assassins'
point of view. I thought it was important to acknowledge that
every assassination is not just an intimate transaction between
perpetrator and victim but also a national tragedy that affects
millions. The addition of the song "Something Just Broke"
in the 1992 London production successfully addressed this issue
and adjusted the ideological balance of the musical.
In the winter
of 1990, I was in the throes of recruiting students for a new
musical theater program at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia.
My wife was in the final weeks of pregnancy, about to give birth
to our second son. And at Playwrights Horizons in New York, the
Sondheim-Weidman Assassins was about to open. All three events
were smashingly successful, though none was without its complications.
In particular, Assassins, at the time of its opening, seemed out
of step with the temporary patriotic fervor inspired by Operation
Desert Storm. Audiences and critics, while impressed by the skill
of its creators, found the dark subject matter of Assassins too
disturbing, and the money needed to transfer the show to Broadway
eluded its would-be producers. And yet the work managed somehow
to escape obscurity. A successful London production appeared in
1992, and noteworthy productions were staged to considerable acclaim
in Washington, D.C., and other American cities. Colleges, in particular,
seemed to embrace the work, a venue that seemed entirely appropriate
given the thought-provoking nature of the material.
Bringing the
project full circle, I directed the Philadelphia premiere of the
Sondheim-Weidman Assassins in 1994, and found that ideas and images
from my original script added an extra dimension to my interpretation
of Sondheim and Weidman's work. For instance, I thought that the
character of the Proprietor in the first scene bore a resemblance
to a character in my musical called the Fat Man, a silent and
ominous figure who occupied a central role in the conspiracy to
enlist my fictional assassin and kill the president. I thought
it would be interesting to make the Proprietor more of a recurring
presence. We returned to his shooting gallery at several points
in my production of Assassins, including the hallucinatory moments
leading up to "Another National Anthem" and the final
reprise of "Everybody's Got The Right," where, in the
play's final moment, he silently held out a gun to the first row
of the audience with an enigmatic smile that asked, "Who's
next?"
While the
ultimate success of Assassins is largely attributable to the creative
brilliance of its authors, who have fashioned a unique and remarkable
piece of musical theater, I would like to think that part of this
work's persistence is the result of the potency of its subject
matter. In his initial letter to me, Sondheim said he was "haunted"
by the idea of my musical, and my return visits to the material
as teacher and director confirm that the subject still haunts
me, too. It remains deeply stirring to revisit this dark side
of the American dream, disturbing to contemplate the thin line
that separates the assassin and the "average" American.
I am often
asked my opinion of the Sondheim-Weidman Assassins, and my feelings
are those I imagine that a parent would have upon re-meeting a
child he has given up for adoption. The "family resemblance"
is clear to anyone who knows the history of the work's development,
and yet this Assassins is unmistakably the creation of its adoptive
parents: Their sophistication and their loving nurture are evident
in every detail. As I write this, with the prospect of a New York
revival of Assassins becoming increasingly likely, I am hopeful
that more theatergoers will have the opportunity to meet this
wayward progeny of mine and reflect upon the remarkable circumstances
that led to the creation of this uniquely American musical.
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