If there’s one musical theatre composer who’s able to
subvert expectations, it’s Sondheim – the man who can tell a story backwards, explore
relationships with brutal honesty, reveal the darker side of childhood
fairytales and find humour in a pair of serial killers.
Assassins, then,
is no different. Who else could eke out
sympathy from America’s most notorious killers?
The likes of John Wilkes Booth, Charles Guiteau, John Hinckley and Lee
Harvey Oswald are brought together like some grim murderous family, the show
detailing the hits and misses of various assassination attempts on US Presidents. It’s a satire of the
American Dream that gives voice to the unheard, to those whom America has
failed and de-humanised. In Sondheim’s words, “everybody’s
got the right”. Through its mockery of traditional
American band music (and one of Sondheim’s most tuneful scores), we find truth,
honesty and injustice in a series of psychotic, maniacal characters. Watching Harry Morrison’s madly devoted Hinckley
(obsessed with actress Jodie Foster) and Carly Bawden’s Lynette Fromme (lover
to Charles Manson) singing the beautiful “Unworthy Of Your Love” to their
respective loves prior to committing murder is as unhinged as Sweeney singing
to his razors.
There are more time travel anomalies than a Christopher
Nolan film, but the various disparate parts are held together by a circus theme
(“you wanna shoot a President?”) as well as the fictional Proprietor (a muscly Simon
Lipkin with clown paint dripping down his face and a target on his back), a
banjo playing hill-billy Balladeer (Jamie Parker), and a small ensemble of
bystanders representing the general public.
It’s madness, but it works. Soutra
Gilmour’s set for this production continues the deranged and grimy circus theme:
monologues are delivered from a dodgem car; the cast crawl over a huge clown
head forlornly left on its side; and overbearing hit and miss signs light up
after each gunshot. The use of blood red
confetti also provides some powerful imagery.
It’s true that, whilst the performances are all wonderfully
twisted, some characters are given more stage time than others. John Wilkes Booth is meant to be the leader
of the group, but the pretty-voiced Aaron Tveit doesn’t quite have the stage
presence – particularly by comparison to Lipkin’s burly Proprietor who is the
real controller of the drama. Andy Nyman
is a playful yet uncontrollable Guiteau (who looks more than a little like
Sondheim himself); David Roberts plays a touching, quietly mournful Czolgosz
with a resonant bass voice; Stewart Clarke’s Giuseppe Zangara is suitably
psychotic in his early number (but is overall underused); and the pairing of comedian
Catherine Tate and Bawden as Sarah Jane Moore and Lynette Fromme is full of
laugh-out loud black comedy. Mike
McShane also brings humour into his lengthy monologues as the Santa imitating Samuel
Byck, in which Sondheim pokes fun at his old collaborator Leonard Bernstein. The ensemble, however, are largely
unnecessary – there simply isn’t enough for them to do, detracting from what is
otherwise a taut character drama. Their penultimate
number “Something Just Broke” saps all the tension out of a glorious climax.
If Byck’s story of hijacking a plane tells us anything,
though, it’s how much Sondheim’s musical still resonates with a modern audience
(its premiere was in 1990). There’s plenty
of humour in this dark satire, yet for all its psychotic performances and
cleverly fantastical directorial touches from Jamie Lloyd, there is a frightening realism
bristling beneath the surface.
5/5
Watch: Assassins runs
at the Menier Chocolate Factory until 7th March.
Photograph: Nobby Clark
