“Assassins” opens in a garish fairground,
as the proprietor of a shooting stall whose sign flashes SHOOT! WIN! encourages
eight customers to become winners instead of losers. How? By shooting a President and
gaining instant celebrity and a place in history. “Everybody’s got the right to dream,” he
tells them, handing each a gun to aim at silhouette targets, and
introducing them to the audience. Appropriately suggesting a limbo
for the dispossessed, disappointed, and demented, the fairgrounds’
game of chance is backed by a wooden-beamed skeleton of light
and shadows, resembling the supporting structure of an old-time
roller coaster. As the would-be killers agree that “everybody’s
got the right,” the proprietor eggs them on to achieve their dreams
of love or recognition or fame: “No job? Cupboard
bare? / One room, no one there?/ Hey, pal, don’t
despair: / You wanna shoot a President?”
In an excellent portrayal by Michael Cerveris,
Southern actor John Wilkes Booth is the prototype of murderers
to follow. His stirring song of self-aggrandizement justifying
the murder of Lincoln at Ford’s Theatre in 1865 as the heroic
destruction of a tyrant is, however, set askew by counterpoint
from a Balladeer (Neil Patrick Harris), who with irony typical
of the composer, suggests that bad reviews and waning popularity
really motivated Booth’s claim to celebrity.
Trapped in a barn set on fire by his pursuers, Booth spends
his last moments penning a letter declaring his altruistic motives.
The letter is never published.
Contrast being the keynote of a Sondheim musical
– the irony of the illusion versus the reality – the Balladeer
continues to deflate the claims of assassins like Charles Guiteau,
a demented evangelist who shoots President Garfield in 1881 because
he fails to reward Guiteau with the
ambassadorship to France for his writing an unsolicited campaign
speech. In a chilling larger-than-life
portrayal by the talented Denis O’Hare, Guiteau
jauntily cakewalks up the stairs to the scaffold singing a hymn
with lyrics he penned himself for the execution, “I Am Going to
the Lordy.”
Samuel Byck (Mario Cantone) needs no Balladeer
to remind us of his inconsistencies.
The unemployed tire salesman voiced his complains about
corruption in politics on long, rambling tapes which he sent to
celebrities. In a standup monologue that is both funny and scary,
he is dressed in the Santa Claus costume he actually wore when
picketing the White House. Attempting to assassinate President Nixon in
1974, Byk is seen piloting a commercial
jetliner he has hijacked, with the intent of crash diving it into
the White House. He killed two before he killed himself.
Fate or shortness of stature deflects the assassination attempt
on President Roosevelt by immigrant bricklayer Giuseppe Zangara( (Jeffrey Kuhn). Barely five feet tall, he blamed the burning pains in his stomach
on the capitalist system that exploited him as a child worker. In Miami
in 1933, he stood on a chair in the crowd to take aim at the President;
it wobbled, and he missed, killing the mayor of Chicago
instead. Here Sondheim
introduces realism in the reaction of the Ensemble or chorus –
those everyday citizens who had come to cheer the President and
now, thrown off balance, are recounting what they witnessed and
asking, “Why?”
At the Pan-American exposition in Buffalo in
1901 a few bars of “Hail to the Chief” welcome President McKinley
before skewing into a dirge as the President is shot and killed
by Leon Czolgosz, a Polish laborer in a bottle factory. James Barbour’s beautiful rich voice as Leon
recounts the pain and injury he suffers by making glass bottles,
and in a brief but touching meeting with Emma Goldman, he confesses
that he has been stalking her from town to town to hear and act
on her speeches advocating anarchy. He declares his love for her as she rushes off
to a meeting, while he takes off for the Buffalo
exposition, with a view of murdering of McKinley as a “duty.”
In a barber-shop quartet that is a paean of
praise to guns as the great equalizer, Mr. Barbour’s Czolgosz
joins Booth, Guiteau, and Sarah Jane
Moore, the batty housewife who tried to assassinate President
Ford. The lyricism of the music contrasts to the murder
weapons they hold and reminds one of Sweeney Todd’s love ballad to his razors.
“Unworthy of Your Love,” is a haunting love duet
beautifully sung by John W. Hinckley, Jr. (Alexander Gemignani)
as he addresses a photograph of Jodie Foster and by Lynette “Squeaky”
Fromme in praise of her lover Charles Manson, to whose “family”
she belonged. Both hoped their attempted assassination of
a President would impress the object of their love. Hinckley tried to shoot President Regan, and
“Squeaky” believes her attempt on the life of President Ford will
result in a trial that will offer witness Manson (she believes
he is the “son of God”) the opportunity to preach to the world.
The tone lightens, momentarily, with Mary Catherine Garrison
as “Squeaky” and Becky Ann Baker
as Moore ineptly attempting
to kill Gerald Ford.
In “Something Just Broke” (added for the Donmar
London production in 1992) the chorus of ordinary people comes
into its own. Tension mounts
as Booth and the other assassins enter the Dallas
textbook warehouse in 1963 and convince Lee Harvey Oswald (Neil
Patrick Harris) that he can achieve the power and importance he
always sought and never attained – by shooting President Kennedy.
Most moving is this song by the Ensemble, representing
the dazed public onlookers to the tragedy.
The finale is an ironic reminder of the ending
of “Oklahoma.” After the reprise of “Everybody’s got the right
to dream,” the downstage cast face the
auditorium and point their guns at the audience. With a full orchestra directed by Paul Gemignani, and direction by Joe Mantello,
“Assassins” is one Broadway production you won’t forget after
you leave the theater. (Studio
54, 254 W. 54, New York, N.Y.,
performance schedule and tickets: www.roundabouttheatre.org. )
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