"Assassins"
Hollywood Reporter
April 23, 2004
By Frank Scheck

Bottom line: A troubling and controversial musical finally makes it to Broadway after thirteen years.

Thirteen years after its premiere, Stephen Sondheim and John Weidman's controversial musical exploring the psyches and social phenomena behind presidential assassins has finally arrived on Broadway.

Originally scheduled to be presented by the Roundabout Theater Company three years ago but delayed due to the events of 9/11, "Assassins" is a troubling, frequently brilliant work that doesn't quite succeed in its ambitious aspirations but nonetheless demands to be seen. With the theater's large subscription base, the production should have no trouble filling seats, although long-term prospects for this challenging show are, as they always have been, questionable.

Weidman's book is structured as a sort of music hall entertainment, with the events framed by a sideshow setting in which a menacing Proprietor (Marc Kudisch) runs a carnival game inviting the various nefarious figures to "c'mon and shoot a president...you can get the prize." The rogues gallery includes eight would-be or successful assassins. Besides the well-known Oswald (Neil Patrick Harris), Booth (Michael Cerveris) and Hinckley (Alexander Gemignani), there is also: Charles Guiteau (Denis O'Hare), killer of James Garfield; Leon Czolgosz (James Barbour), an anarchist who assassinated McKinley; Giuseppe Zangara (Jeffrey Kuhn), an Italian immigrant who shot at Franklin Roosevelt but instead killed the mayor of Chicago; Samuel Byck (Mario Cantone), an unemployed tire salesman who tried to hijack a jet with the intention of crashing it into the White House and killing Nixon; and Lynette Fromme (Mary Catherine Garrison) and Sara Jane Moore (Becky Ann Baker), who both tried to kill Gerald Ford.

The show is composed of a series of vaudeville-style sketches and numbers, ranging from the serious to the farcical, exploring the minds and motivations of the grotesque figures on display. Both book and score display a mordant, ironic wit, capitalizing greatly on the twisted psyches and motivations of its subjects. But too often, Weidman's book is content to settle for easy laughs, as in such scenes as a lengthy encounter between a bumbling Fromme and Moore in which they bond while shooting a bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken. It resembles a demented episode of "I Love Lucy," and even recycles the old joke of a stumbling Gerald Ford. For every scene resonating with pathos and emotion, such as an encounter between a lovestruck Czolgosz and anarchist Emma Goldman (Anne L. Nathan), there is another designed for cheap laughs, like Byck dictating a rambling rant to Leonard Bernstein into a tape recorder. One gets a glimpse at the power the show might have had in a chilling scene towards the end, when the assassins gather together in the Texas Schoolbook Depository to encourage a hesitant Lee Harvey Oswald to do the deed.

Sondheim's score is far from his best, but second rate Sondheim is better than just about anyone else, and there are several standouts here, including the ironically jaunty "Everybody's Got the Right," the chilling "Gun Song" and the powerful "Something Just Broke," the latter a moving song dealing with the emotional repercussions of the Kennedy assassination that was added for the 1992 London production.

Joe Mantello, who mines the material for all its horror, has superbly directed the lavish production, performed on a massive metal set lit and festooned to resemble a carnival fairground. The staging highlight is the moment after Oswald shoots Kennedy, when Sondheim's score rises to a shattering crescendo and the assassin stands amidst a blazing gallery of lights, the famous Zapruder film being projected on his chest.

The superb cast is fully up to the challenging demands of the material, with the exception of Mario Cantone, who once again employs his trademark high pitched screaming to irritating effect. Standout turns are delivered by Denis O'Hare as an extravagantly demented Guiteau, and Neil Patrick Harris, as both the musical narrator and Oswald.

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