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"Assassins"
Broadway World.com
April 23, 2004
By Jenna Tessa Fox
Ironically, the two-year delay of the Roundabout’s revival
of Assassins might have been the best thing for
the show. Fractured though political thought has always been,
the recent political dilemmas and scandals have created deep schisms
in the American psyche, with violently passionate emotions on
each side. As a nation, we have grown up painfully quickly over
the last two years, and the righteous indignation that greeted
the show’s premiere during the Gulf War now seems like a
warm and fuzzy memory.
And it’s
an election year, to boot.
So with cynicism
at a peak and politics at the front of everyone’s mind,
this is a perfect moment to bring back Stephen Sondheim and John
Weidman’s masterpiece of American angst and action.
And what a
masterpiece it is. The script takes a hard look at the American
style of assassinations– killing political leaders not to
further a competitive party, but as personal vendettas, retribution
for misery. The opening song ("Everybody’s Got The
Right to be Happy") perfectly sets up the warped mindset
of the killers: the Declaration of Independence says that Americans
are entitled to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness"
(italics mine), which many people misinterpret as the right to
be happy. To a twisted mind, any unhappiness must therefore mean
a flaw in the government, and the leader of that government must
be to blame. It’s a daring angle to take, but frighteningly
effective. By seeing the country and its flaws through the eyes
of the assassins, we begin to see them not merely as madmen, but
as people who have been rudely awakened from the American Dream.
No excuses are offered for their actions, only explanations, which
we can take or leave. It’s a bitter pill to swallow, and
the neither the creative team nor the actors tries to sugar-coat
the horror that these killers caused.
Assassins
also gives us the chance to see to masters of musical theatre
in their finest form, not only as writers, but as collaborators.
Indeed, at times, one can easily forget that the book and the
score came from two different writers. Sondheim’s music
is in peak form, ranging from country twang to pop to variations
on political tunes. The lyrics are equally brilliant, giving each
character a unique voice (and often using direct quotes from the
historical figure). Weidman’s book compliments the songs
perfectly, alternating true moments from history with fantasy
sequences in which assassins separated by centuries meet and argue.
Joe Mantello directs these scenes with a uniform mix of humor
and gravity, easing us into the surreal world of the show, and
of the assassins themselves. This world is aptly represented by
Robert Brill’s skeletal set of scaffolding that serves as
a metaphorical shooting gallery, and cells from which the assassins
can watch their fellow killers once their own stories are over.
There are
numerous changes from the 1991 Playwright’s Horizons production,
most notably the expansion of the Proprietor’s role in the
show, and the inclusion of "Something Just Broke," a
song that was added for the British premiere. As played by the
always debonair Marc Kudisch, the Proprietor no longer merely
hands the assassins their weapons at the show’s start: he
remains throughout and guides them through each murder. He plays
the little devil on the assassins’ shoulders to the Balladeer’s
(Neil Patrick Harris) Everyman of an angel... which would be a
wonderful device if Sondheim and Weidman hadn’t already
written that part for John Wilkes Booth (Michael Cerveris). Having
both Booth and the Proprietor against the Balladeer becomes overkill,
pun intended. Pared down slightly and made more sly and manipulative
than downright evil, the role might be smaller, but it would be
much stronger. "Something Just Broke" is equally out
of place at the end of the show, and the truly lovely song does
not get the moment it deserves. Rather than being a heartbreaking
rumination on the country’s reaction to an assassination,
the song is an anticlimax after the emotionally shattering scene
that precedes it. Such a beautiful song should have a stronger
placement.
Like the writing
team, the cast demonstrates how to work as part of a group and
shine individually at the same time. The individual performances
range from very good to excellent, with the (tragically) notable
exceptions of Jeffrey Kuhn and Denis O’Hare (as Giuseppe
Zangara and Charles Guiteau, respectively), both of whom overplay
their roles in their individual scenes. (To be fair, their work
in the ensemble scenes is flawless; it is only when all attention
is on them that they go over-the-top.)
Michael Cerveris is almost unrecognizable as John Wilkes Booth,
giving a much less gentlemanly performance than Victor Garber
did in 1991. His rage and roughness are never far beneath the
calm demeanor he tries to affect, and violence seems to drip from
his teeth when he speaks. Comedian Mario Cantone proves what a
versatile actor he truly is with his performance as Sam Byck,
as funny a clown as Pagliacci and just as menacing. James Barbour’s
Leon Czolgosz is awkward and angry, but his attempts at tenderness
are truly touching, and make his violence much more frightening.
As the female would-be assassins Sara Jane Moore and Lynette "Squeaky"
Frome (both of whom tried to kill President Gerald Ford), Becky
Ann Baker and Mary Catherine Garrison handle the dark comedy of
their scenes beautifully, but do not sing as strongly as the rest
of the cast. Alexander Gemignani is appropriately mousy as John
Hinckley, and his escape into the fantasy of "Unworthy of
Your Love" is no daydream, but a long-delayed explosion of
passion. While his talents are not put to their best use as the
menacing Proprietor, Marc Kudisch sings wonderfully as ever, and
his Ronald Regan imitation is not to be missed. And Neil Patrick
Harris gives a wonderful performance as the Balladeer, our ironic
guide through the political minefield of history. The Balladeer,
in this production, is the symbol of American innocence, and as
such, Mr. Harris always seems just a little lost. It’s a
very nice touch.
Assassins
is an emotionally devastating theatrical experience, forcing us
to look upon the monsters of our history books and see them as
human beings. By the show’s end, we have journeyed with
these characters and watched them commit (or try to commit) terrible
crimes, but also heard of their own "muffled dreams,"
and their own quests for happiness. That might be the scariest
aspect of the show: while most people would certainly not go to
the extremes the assassins do, we all have muffled dreams. We
all, ultimately, want to be happy. Looking at these people who
resorted to murder to solve their personal problems, perhaps we
might see a little bit of ourselves looking back.
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