‘Assassins’ slays with wit, whimsy
Yes, they pulled it off – a musical with a singin’, dancin’ John Wilkes Booth.
Director Troy Nickerson and the Spokane Civic Theatre took a musical featuring Booth, Lee Harvey Oswald and Squeaky Fromme and made it not just intelligent, and not just thought-provoking, but wildly entertaining.
Composer Stephen Sondheim is, of course, the show’s originating genius. Only Sondheim (“Sweeney Todd,” “Into the Woods”) has the audacity and technical gifts to explore the psychological, not to mention psychotic, world of presidential assassins through the medium of musical comedy. And this is, unmistakably, a musical comedy.
Sondheim’s nine assassins often behave like Broadway comedians, with top hats, canes and waving “jazz hands.” Of course, a normal Broadway dance number doesn’t end with the singer shuffling his way into a noose, as does Charles Guiteau (Gavin Smith), James Garfield’s assassin.
There’s even a vaudeville slapstick duo, Sara Jane Moore (Marianne McLaughlin) and Fromme (Abbey Crawford). Their clownish attempt to assassinate Gerald Ford ends with them picking up their bullets and throwing them at Ford, while shouting, “Bang!”
Still, the question hovering over any production of this show is: How are we expected to sympathize with these murderers?
The answer: We’re not.
Sondheim and writer John Weidman depict these characters as self-deluded (Booth), pathetic (Oswald), moronic (Moore), bonkers (Guiteau) and dangerously antisocial (Samuel Byck). Byck attempted to a fly a plane into Nixon’s White House and is depicted throughout the show in a Santa suit.
No, we are never expected to sympathize with them. One of the show’s key numbers is titled “Something Just Broke,” sung by the ensemble, about the pain and misery that one psychopath with a gun can inflict on millions.
But Sondheim’s purpose is to at least try to understand them, to the extent that we can all feel, at least a little, what drove them to this extreme.
Beyond that, “Assassins” explores with surprising depth such themes as: the extent to which an assassination can alter history; the seductive lure of enduring infamy; and how much easier it is to tear down than to build up. One of my favorite numbers has the gun-wielding assassins repeating the line: “All you have to do is move your little finger.”
Speaking of guns, they go off so often in this show they almost qualify as a percussion instrument. This show also has adult language and, of course, adult themes.
Nickerson is the best choice I can imagine to give this material the combination of depth, intelligence and good old-fashioned entertainment value that it requires. He has shaped this 19-person ensemble into a polished team of pros, with everyone delivering this difficult material with confidence and intensity.
I can’t possibly give everyone the individual credit they are due, except to say that there is not one weak link, not even close, among the nine main assassin characters. The show’s key performance comes from Patrick McHenry Kroetch, brilliant as the intense and cunning Booth. He looks, eerily, a little like Abraham Lincoln himself. Booth functions as a kind of ringleader throughout this show, which is presented in a carnival setting.
McLaughlin and Crawford are priceless as the bungling Moore-Fromme duo. At one point, they attempt to shoot a bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken. Matthew Harget is chilling as Byck, David Gigler is sad and damaged as John Hinckley, and George Green is frighteningly real as the intense and self-pitying Oswald.
The voices are, in general, well up to the demands of Sondheim’s music. Gary Laing’s musical direction and keyboard accompaniment are flawless. I came away wanting to hear Sondheim’s score and lyrics again and again.
This should be a terrific show for the Spokane Civic to take to state, regional and national competition, which is the plan. One area for improvement: The singers need to project the quieter lines with more force and to articulate Sondheim’s lyrics more precisely.
We don’t want to miss a single word.