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"Show Guns"
New York Magazine
April 23, 2004
By John Simon
Theater Review
Two knockout revivals affirm what the originals revealed: that
Sondheim doesn’t always hit his target, and that Larry Kramer
once, assuredly, did.
The initial
production of Stephen Sondheim and John Weidman’s Assassins
fell victim in part to the Gulf War; hardened as we have
become to horror, the Iraq war won’t affect the current
revival. And a lavish and well-considered production it is, directed
by Joe Mantello in the spacious Studio 54. The musical tells the
story—part fact, part fiction—of our nine actual or
foiled presidential assassins, from Booth to Hinckley, and climaxes
with the other eight gathered in the Texas book depository to
spur on Lee Harvey Oswald.
Robert Brill’s
powerful set, evoking the spookiness of an abandoned roller coaster
and arcade; Susan Hilferty’s careful costumes; and Jules
Fisher and Peggy Eisenhauer’s spectacular lighting enhance
the uniformly cogent performances, among which Denis O’Hare’s
whimsical Guiteau, Mario Cantone’s quirky Byck, Becky Ann
Baker’s befuddled Moore, Michael Cerveris’s histrionic
Booth, James Barbour’s shattered Czolgosz, and Marc Kudisch’s
demonic shooting-gallery proprietor are particularly memorable.
A second-best Sondheim score, attractively orchestrated by Michael
Starobin and conducted by Paul Gemignani, is still the equal of
just about anybody’s best; Weidman’s book is at once
funny and creepy; and Jonathan Butterell’s minimal choreography
is up to its restricted task.
“What
is it all for? Assassins, however colorful, hardly
inspire empathy.”
But what is it all for? Too many principals precludes in-depth
treatment, and assassins, however colorful, hardly inspire empathy.
If the point is sympathy for the devil, it fails to come off as
it does, to some extent, for Sweeney Todd; nor
are the two weird women in a league with, say, the weird heroine
of Passion. We leave having witnessed something
more grandiose than grand, and of which we can make no more sense
than of an earthquake.
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