THEATER
Tonys gear up to honor a conflicted year on Broadway
The Chicago Tribune
May 30, 2004
By Michael Phillips
Bad times of
a higher and intentional grade come slithering out of "Assassins,"
a seven-times-nominated revival of the 1991 songspiel from composer/lyricist
Stephen Sondheim and librettist John Weidman. In this carnival spook
house of a revue, featuring successful and unsuccessful killers
of presidents, you will find as fine an ensemble as any on Broadway.
Joe Mantello's confident staging can't redeem all the flab in the
book. (This is one show dying to go out as a solo act -- meaning,
all songs and next-to-no talk.)
Yet "Assassins" features one sustained book/song passage
as great as any in a post-"Sweeney Todd" Sondheim musical.
It's the sicko soft-rock "Unworthy of Your Love," a
duet sung by Squeaky Fromme and John Hinckley, dedicated to Charles
Manson and Jodie Foster, respectively. This is unsettling greatness
and complexity of purpose. In this number, and in flashes elsewhere,
"Assassins" proves that, with Sondheim, the world and
the audience sometimes catch up the second time around.
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