"Sondheim's 'Assassins' Illuminates Nine Dark Hearts"
The Chicago Sun Times
May 9, 2004
By Heidi Weiss

NEW YORK -- The Broadway musical has always been a great playground for cultural synthesis -- mixing high art and pop entertainment, adapting stories both familiar and groundbreaking, and dabbling in all forms of musical borrowing.

Rooted in such opposite forms and traditions as the European operetta and all-American jazz, the musical theater's history over the past three or four decades has been consumed in large part by its attempt to resolve the tension between sustaining the classic "Broadway sound" developed during the heyday of Tin Pan Alley, and finding a way to absorb all forms of the rock music that dominate every aspect of contemporary life.

But the truth is, the Broadway sound has always absorbed multiple influences -- from Leonard Bernstein's infusion of Latin jazz into his score for "West Side Story" to, more recently, the interlacing of Elton John's pop score for "The Lion King" with a rich dose of traditional South African music.

Listen to the sounds in three very different musicals now on Broadway and you will hear both the familiar and the new. Everything is grist for the theater's musical mill. And audiences -- who tend to be exposed to a far richer tapestry of sound these days, whether on the soundtracks for films and television shows or in clubs -- seem to thrive on the eclecticism.

'ASSASSINS'

In "Assassins," first produced Off-Broadway in 1990, and now in a Roundabout Theatre revival in the Broadway cabaret-style space of Studio 54, Stephen Sondheim and writer John Weisman imagined a bizarre "reunion" of nine successful and unsuccessful assassins of American presidents -- from John Wilkes Booth to Lee Harvey Oswald and John W. Hinckley Jr.

A faded amusement park shooting gallery is the backdrop, and designer Robert Brill's set, with its towering, perilous staircase, has a roller-coaster sense of danger about it. But it is the mix of hymns and ballads and other period pieces that unifies all these disgruntled and in many cases, psychotic shooters, including Booth (played by Michael Cerveris, recently seen here in Chicago Shakespeare Theatre's production of Sondheim's "A Little Night Music"), and Charles Guiteau (the cocky 19th century nutcase, played to galvanizing effect by former Chicago actor Denis O'Hare), and Hinckley (who sings "Unworthy of Your Love," a perfectly mawkish, 1970s-style love song on guitar). And both the temperament of the individual killers, and the tempo of their particular time, is of crucial importance.

Sondheim is the quintessential Broadway composer. He also is in a class by himself. A master of pastiche, he can conjure a distinctive take on everything from classic vaudeville to torch songs, and he masterfully matches his music to the story he is telling, whether it requires a European waltz, a Victorian-era ballad or an old-fashioned military march.

As is the case for the musical "Bombay Dreams," the musicians for "Assassins" sit in two ornate balcony boxes that look out over the stage. And they play such non-traditional Broadway instruments as banjo, euphonium and mandolin. This production, directed by Joe Mantello, seems overblown in many ways, and in the end, there isn't all that much to say about the combination of rage, delusion, frustration and dreams of glory that have driven these men and women to pull the trigger on their leaders. But to be sure, they each march to the sound of a different drummer.

"Assassins" is running at Studio 54, 254 W. 54th St. Tickets: (212) 719-1300.

NOTE: Speaking of Sondheim and Weidman, the original cast recording of "Bounce!," their ill-fated new musical that opened last year at the Goodman Theatre, has just been released on the Nonesuch label.

It's difficult to know what those who didn't see the show on stage will make of this story of the embattled Mizener brothers -- one, the architect of Boca Raton, Fla., and the other, a feckless and destructive con man. I liked the show better than many people did. But listening to it again, I was struck by how angry its characters often are, and how little sense of redemption or resolution there is in the end.

Here's a closer look:

'BOMBAY DREAMS'

In the video that plays just outside the Broadway Theatre, where "Bombay Dreams" is now running, the show's producer, Andrew Lloyd Webber, warns (or perhaps comforts) his potential audience: "This is not a Ravi Shankar concert." He is referring, of course, to the master Indian sitar player who influenced George Harrison, and who lately is best known as Norah Jones' father. The point he is trying to make is that "Bombay Dreams" is no demanding academic exercise. Rather, it draws on the pop sound of Bollywood films and their hyped up version of traditional Indian music.

A "living movie"-within-a show, this musical -- composed by Oxford University-trained A.R. Rahman, whose Bollywood film scores and albums have sold in the millions -- is unadulterated kitschy fun. Bright and shiny and silly and plastic, it is set to the same infectiously pulsating, revved-up beat that drives India's popular cinema. And it features a book by the British born Meera Syal (and Broadway's Thomas Meehan), whose soap opera-style fairy-tale story and glitzy, fantastical production numbers suggest that Bollywood is in many ways closer to America's old Ziegfeld Follies than anything else, except perhaps an ABBA concert.

The musical's "real" story tells of Akaash (played by the appealing and dazzlingly energetic Manu Narayan), a young man from the slums of Bombay who finds almost overnight movie stardom, and in the process, severs himself from his Untouchable roots. Akaash's story also becomes the basis for the scenario of the Bollywood movie in which he stars. This results in there being little stylistic difference between the "real life" scenes and their movie version. Perhaps that's the point, but it makes for a certain sameness throughout.

Nevertheless, when the stage erupts with a number like "Shakalaka Baby," and the balcony boxes on either side of the theater begin to vibrate -- filled with all sorts of exotic drums and percussion instruments to augment the standard pit band sound -- something in the theater does change. "Bombay Dreams" may be a watered down, fast-food-style curry, but it unquestionably puts a bit of spice into the theatrical mix and gets your feet tapping wildly to a different beat.

"Bombay Dreams" is running at the Broadway Theatre, Broadway and 52nd Street Tickets: (800) 432-7250.

'CAROLINE OR CHANGE'

In the new, quasi-autobiographical musical for which he has supplied both the book and lyrics, Tony Kushner ("Angels in America"), tells the story of a middle-age black maid who works for a Jewish family in Lake Charles, La., in 1963.

While the civil rights movement is erupting in the larger world just outside the door, a palpable racial tension lurks in the dank basement laundry room of the Gellmans' home where Caroline Thibodeaux (the uncompromising Tonya Pinkins), spends many of her working hours. The cause of that tension is deep and multifaceted, but it reaches the breaking point as a result of a strange and destructive little game that ultimately destroys her relationship with the alienated young boy, Noah Gellman (Harrison Chad), who in many ways looks to her as his surrogate mother.

This game, devised by Noah's stepmother, Rose (Veanne Cox), is supposed to teach the boy the value of the nickels, dimes and quarters he leaves in his dirty clothes. According to her rules, the unremoved change is supposed to become the property of Caroline. This is all fine and good until Noah leaves a $20 bill from his grandfather in his pocket. His break with Caroline over possession of this money is sharp, irrevocable and life-altering for both of them. And it compounds Caroline's rage while planting profound guilt in Noah.

The story mixes realism with a sort of pop-surreal fable style. And for her score, composer Jeanine Tesori draws largely on the gamut of black music of the time, from the ever-present blues, to the sexualized rock of Little Richard, to the emerging Motown sound (a sassy Supremes-like trio plays the role of The Radio, from which emanates all the new sounds of the period that Caroline spends her time listening to while ironing.) This music does not translate into action for the bitter but conservative Caroline, but it does accompany the liberation of her spirited teenage daughter.

Tesori, who demonstrated a real feel for the black idiom in her earlier musical, "Violet" (she also penned the score for "Thoroughly Modern Millie"), does so again here. Unfortunately, Kushner, in the classic style of a self-loathing Jew, has little but revulsion for his own roots. You can hear it and feel it throughout, most notably when the Gellmans, modestly successful first generation Jews, sing their Hanukkah songs.

"Caroline, or Change" is running at the Eugene O'Neill Theatre, 230 W. 49th St. Tickets: (800) 432-7250.

'ASSASSINS'

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