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"Assassins' at the Arden
Steve Cohen
Mission impossible, accomplished
STEVE COHEN
Stephen Sondheim’s Assassins is a difficult work. Its New York premiere was brief and lost money, as did its Broadway production in 2004. Small wonder. Audiences grow fidgety when confronted with the human side of assassins of American presidents. They become downright uncomfortable when these murderers and attempted murderers start singing and dancing.
But I always found the play fascinating, and it’s even more so in Terrence Nolen’s production at the Arden. He achieves the near impossible: a good balance between spookiness, humor and a serious look at the American Dream.
On a tall and narrow set by David Gordon that’s radically different from any previous Arden backdrop, the men and women who took shots at Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley, FDR, JFK, Nixon (by airplane rather than by gun), Ford and Reagan stay close to the audience, and at times walk into the seating areas. All the while their reflections remain visible in a series of mirrors along the back of the small stage. So do our reflections— Nolen’s hint that the public is partially complicit in the desire to shoot down its leaders.
Vaudeville songs introduce the nine men and women who tried– and in four cases actually did— kill a U.S. president. They are all malcontents— sometimes wacky, sometimes idealists with valid complaints. The score has much in common with Sondheim’s Follies, which echoed the musical forms of the Ziegfeld Follies. Here we have Civil War ballads, folk songs, spirituals, cakewalks, Sousa marches and soft rock hits to evoke each assassin’s era.
Downside of the pursuit of happiness
"Everybody’s got the right to be happy," says Sondheim’s lyric in the opening anthem. The composer implies that this distortion of Jefferson’s phrase about the pursuit of happiness— what John Perry Barlow called “the inner sense that we deserve to be happy”— launched American society down a slippery slope of greed, hedonism and guilt.
Sondheim’s disturbing proclamation is sung in a toe-tapping number that’s as catchy as anything he ever wrote. Later we hear the melodious "Ballad of John Wilkes Booth" and a pretty pop romance, "I am unworthy of your love." A show-stopping song, "Look on the bright side," accompanies Charles Guiteau’s cakewalk up the steps to the gallows where he is hanged for the killing of President Garfield. This first-rate, happy-sounding music creates an intentionally uncomfortable cognitive dissonance with the subject matter.
Sondheim’s sympathies clearly lie with the economically downtrodden and opposed to swaggering American power. The show was written in 1990 and opened the week that Bush the- Elder invaded Iraq. Many of its lines seem contemporaneous today. (In one particularly eerie scene, Sam Byck plans to crash a plane into the White House to kill Richard Nixon.)
Two problem scenes
Assassins suffers from one flaw: the stand-alone, unintegrated nature of two long, talky scenes without a song. First is the monologue of Sam Byck, played hilariously by Scott Greer. To have given Nixon’s putative assassin a song would have lengthened the scene and the play, but Sondheim should have done it anyway.
The second is the final scene, with Lee Harvey Oswald in the Texas School Book Depository. For the only time, Assassins departs from facts and veers into surrealism. As depicted here, Oswald has no intention of shooting JFK, but John Wilkes Booth miraculously produces a rifle, and the other assassins convince Oswald that killing Kennedy is the only way he can connect with them, with history and with the world.
The song "Something Just Broke" was added at the end of this scene for a London production and is included here. But this song has citizens mourning Kennedy— it's about the victim, not the killer— so some Sondheim afficionados feel it doesn’t belong. I too feel uncomfortable with the tone of the scene, but one can argue that Oswald’s crime is still so hurtful that it requires different handling than the rest of the play. Clearly, Assassins provokes debate. Although only an hour and a half, it is one of Sondheim’s most deeply-layered creations.
A cast of historical look-alikes
These flaws are no fault of Nolen's, of course, or of his Arden collaborators. The casting and staging are terrific. All members of the cast were chosen for their physical resemblance to the characters and their singing and acting skills, and all are impressive– Timothy Hill as John Hinckley, Mary Martello as Sara Jane Moore, Erin Brueggemann as Squeaky Fromme, Christopher Patrick Mullen as Leon Czolgosz and Jim Poulos as Giuseppe Zangara.
Ben Dibble is the balladeer and also plays Oswald. In his earlier scenes, Dibble's clear, lighter voice contrasts beautifully with the darker baritone of Jeff Coon as Booth. Coon has played more sympathetic roles, to put it mildly, but he has never sounded richer nor more dramatic. Dibble and Coon also play trumpet and trombone onstage.
A Sugg tour de force
James Sugg makes a special impression as Garfield’s assassin Guiteau. Philadelphians know Sugg as a composer and an instrumental prodigy, but we never saw the range of his talent as a singer, dancer and actor. This is a tour de force of strutting razzmatazz with flashing eyes, top hat and cane.
The tall set leaves room for unobstructed visual projections that add much to the show. It nicely spotlights Guiteau’s hanging. What’s more, it enables John Wilkes Booth to emerge dramatically on what looks like a balcony box to shoot Lincoln.
The score of Assassins has an unusual history. The 1990 production had only three players in the pit: Michael Starobin on synthesizers, Paul Gemigniani on drums and percussion and Paul Ford on piano. For the cast recording, Starobin created a full orchestration and Gemignani conducted 33 players. The 2004 Broadway production had only 13 musicians, in keeping with the contemporary, economically inspired shrinkage of pit bands. Here, Eric Ebbenga leads a small backstage band effectively.
Conductor Ebbenga and director Nolen also deserve praise for top-notch singing by everyone in the ensemble, which is not a foregone accomplishment. The Broadway recording was marred when talented people whispered, growled and shouted instead of singing. This Arden cast proves you can simultaneously sing -- really sing – the notes and also convey the drama.
To read a response, click here.
STEVE COHEN
Stephen Sondheim’s Assassins is a difficult work. Its New York premiere was brief and lost money, as did its Broadway production in 2004. Small wonder. Audiences grow fidgety when confronted with the human side of assassins of American presidents. They become downright uncomfortable when these murderers and attempted murderers start singing and dancing.
But I always found the play fascinating, and it’s even more so in Terrence Nolen’s production at the Arden. He achieves the near impossible: a good balance between spookiness, humor and a serious look at the American Dream.
On a tall and narrow set by David Gordon that’s radically different from any previous Arden backdrop, the men and women who took shots at Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley, FDR, JFK, Nixon (by airplane rather than by gun), Ford and Reagan stay close to the audience, and at times walk into the seating areas. All the while their reflections remain visible in a series of mirrors along the back of the small stage. So do our reflections— Nolen’s hint that the public is partially complicit in the desire to shoot down its leaders.
Vaudeville songs introduce the nine men and women who tried– and in four cases actually did— kill a U.S. president. They are all malcontents— sometimes wacky, sometimes idealists with valid complaints. The score has much in common with Sondheim’s Follies, which echoed the musical forms of the Ziegfeld Follies. Here we have Civil War ballads, folk songs, spirituals, cakewalks, Sousa marches and soft rock hits to evoke each assassin’s era.
Downside of the pursuit of happiness
"Everybody’s got the right to be happy," says Sondheim’s lyric in the opening anthem. The composer implies that this distortion of Jefferson’s phrase about the pursuit of happiness— what John Perry Barlow called “the inner sense that we deserve to be happy”— launched American society down a slippery slope of greed, hedonism and guilt.
Sondheim’s disturbing proclamation is sung in a toe-tapping number that’s as catchy as anything he ever wrote. Later we hear the melodious "Ballad of John Wilkes Booth" and a pretty pop romance, "I am unworthy of your love." A show-stopping song, "Look on the bright side," accompanies Charles Guiteau’s cakewalk up the steps to the gallows where he is hanged for the killing of President Garfield. This first-rate, happy-sounding music creates an intentionally uncomfortable cognitive dissonance with the subject matter.
Sondheim’s sympathies clearly lie with the economically downtrodden and opposed to swaggering American power. The show was written in 1990 and opened the week that Bush the- Elder invaded Iraq. Many of its lines seem contemporaneous today. (In one particularly eerie scene, Sam Byck plans to crash a plane into the White House to kill Richard Nixon.)
Two problem scenes
Assassins suffers from one flaw: the stand-alone, unintegrated nature of two long, talky scenes without a song. First is the monologue of Sam Byck, played hilariously by Scott Greer. To have given Nixon’s putative assassin a song would have lengthened the scene and the play, but Sondheim should have done it anyway.
The second is the final scene, with Lee Harvey Oswald in the Texas School Book Depository. For the only time, Assassins departs from facts and veers into surrealism. As depicted here, Oswald has no intention of shooting JFK, but John Wilkes Booth miraculously produces a rifle, and the other assassins convince Oswald that killing Kennedy is the only way he can connect with them, with history and with the world.
The song "Something Just Broke" was added at the end of this scene for a London production and is included here. But this song has citizens mourning Kennedy— it's about the victim, not the killer— so some Sondheim afficionados feel it doesn’t belong. I too feel uncomfortable with the tone of the scene, but one can argue that Oswald’s crime is still so hurtful that it requires different handling than the rest of the play. Clearly, Assassins provokes debate. Although only an hour and a half, it is one of Sondheim’s most deeply-layered creations.
A cast of historical look-alikes
These flaws are no fault of Nolen's, of course, or of his Arden collaborators. The casting and staging are terrific. All members of the cast were chosen for their physical resemblance to the characters and their singing and acting skills, and all are impressive– Timothy Hill as John Hinckley, Mary Martello as Sara Jane Moore, Erin Brueggemann as Squeaky Fromme, Christopher Patrick Mullen as Leon Czolgosz and Jim Poulos as Giuseppe Zangara.
Ben Dibble is the balladeer and also plays Oswald. In his earlier scenes, Dibble's clear, lighter voice contrasts beautifully with the darker baritone of Jeff Coon as Booth. Coon has played more sympathetic roles, to put it mildly, but he has never sounded richer nor more dramatic. Dibble and Coon also play trumpet and trombone onstage.
A Sugg tour de force
James Sugg makes a special impression as Garfield’s assassin Guiteau. Philadelphians know Sugg as a composer and an instrumental prodigy, but we never saw the range of his talent as a singer, dancer and actor. This is a tour de force of strutting razzmatazz with flashing eyes, top hat and cane.
The tall set leaves room for unobstructed visual projections that add much to the show. It nicely spotlights Guiteau’s hanging. What’s more, it enables John Wilkes Booth to emerge dramatically on what looks like a balcony box to shoot Lincoln.
The score of Assassins has an unusual history. The 1990 production had only three players in the pit: Michael Starobin on synthesizers, Paul Gemigniani on drums and percussion and Paul Ford on piano. For the cast recording, Starobin created a full orchestration and Gemignani conducted 33 players. The 2004 Broadway production had only 13 musicians, in keeping with the contemporary, economically inspired shrinkage of pit bands. Here, Eric Ebbenga leads a small backstage band effectively.
Conductor Ebbenga and director Nolen also deserve praise for top-notch singing by everyone in the ensemble, which is not a foregone accomplishment. The Broadway recording was marred when talented people whispered, growled and shouted instead of singing. This Arden cast proves you can simultaneously sing -- really sing – the notes and also convey the drama.
To read a response, click here.
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