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"Bullseye!"
Broadway.com
April 27 2004
By Barbara & Scott Siegel
As we head into the stretch of the 2003-2004 theater season, the
big guns are coming out. That phrase certainly apropos in regard
to Assassins: It's a virtual NRA convention on
the stage of Studio 54, where Stephen Sondheim's sinister satiricon
of American upheaval has been revived. American assassins about
whom volumes have been written and other killers and wannabes
who are no more than historical footnotes gather together under
Joe Mantello's stunning direction and give us a blood-curdling
peek into a world of outsiders driven, for a whole host of reasons,
to acts of infamy. This is Sondheim at his darkest. Put Assassins
next to Sweeney Todd for its bleak, brooding, biting
sense of humor -- and you can also put it next to Sweeney Todd
on your list of great American musicals.
Assassins is not a musical with much warmth;
Sondheim and book writer John Weidman don't ask you to love these
characters, only to understand what drives them. In that respect,
it's more of an intellectual exercise than anything else -- but,
oddly enough, it's not really a political statement. More than
once during the course of the show, Sondheim and Weidman make
the reassuring point that these terrible acts of violence have
never destroyed the greatness of America.
The musical
is book-ended by the two most infamous assassins in U.S. history,
John Wilkes Booth (Michael Cerveris) and Lee Harvey Oswald (Neil
Patrick Harris). They present themselves on a ghostly carnival
sideshow set masterfully realized by designer Robert Brill. Overseeing
the parade of killers is the "Proprietor" of the carnival;
that role is played by a very scary Marc Kudisch, his head shaven
and his baritone menacing as he entices the sad clowns of history
into his shooting gallery.
From the powerful,
heartbreaking performance of James Barbour as the politically
motivated Leon Czolgosz, who killed President William McKinley,
to the delightfully dark dementia of Denis O'Hare as Charles Guiteau,
who shot President James Garfield twice in the back, Assassins
is, indeed, a carnival of killers. Some of the most talented performers
on Broadway are involved in this Roundabout production -- after
all, it's a Sondheim show! -- and all of them are first rate here.
This production
is a must see for anyone who takes the American musical theater
seriously as an art form. Sondheim's music and lyrics for songs
like "Everybody's Got the Right," "Unworthy of
Your Love," and "Another National Anthem" will
touch the dark recesses of your soul. In a generally disappointing
Broadway season, Assassins is number one with
a bullet.
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