I thought this would be appropriate because we were talking about Stephen Sondheim and dissonance the other day in class. **My information for this post comes from my own copy of the play.
Assassins was written in the late 1980's. The music is by Stephen Sondheim and the book is by John Weidman. It premiered off Broadway in 1990 with the original cast featuring Victor Garber, Patrick Cassidy, Annie Golden, etc. It received a combination of good and bad reviews/responses. A revival was put together originally in 2000-2001, but the production was postponed because of the events of 9-11. In 2004, the revival began at Roundabout. The cast featured Neal Patrick Harris, Michael Cerveris, Marc Kudisch, and Alexander Gemignani. For this production, Assassins won the Tony Awards for Best Revival of a Musical, Best Featured Actor in a Musical, Best Lighting Design, Best Direction of a Musical, and Best Orchestration. In this revival a few things were added and changed from the original production; Neil Patrick Harris played both the Balladeer and Lee Harvey Oswald. Kendra Kassebaum entered the production to play an added role, the Housewife, and a new song entitled "Something Just Broke" was added to the score. The play is staged fairly often in colleges and regional theatres. However, the intense issues and nature of the show often make it fit a featured or limited timeslot rather than a mainstage production spot.
Assassins is very much a nightmare sequence. It opens with a Proprietor enticing the assassins to follow their dreams and sells them weapons. There are nine assassins: John Wilkes Booth, Leon Czolgosz, Charles Guiteau, Giuseppe Zangara, Lee Harvey Oswald, Samuel Byck, John Hinckley, Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme, and Sarah Jane Moore. These are all people who lived and actually tried to assassinate presidents, however successfully. The show interchanges scenes with musical numbers. The setting is very ambiguous. Some believe that the play is set in a kind of hell that these assassins meet and function in. Throughout the show, they meet and find common ground in their feelings of inadequacy an injustice. John Wilkes Booth emerges as a clear leader and setter of precedents. In the show's climax (the climax to me anyway), the assassins sing "Another National Anthem," which sums up their feelings of injustice in America and the impossibility of achieving dreams without drastic measures.
As far as dramaturgical choices, I think the most interesting one is that the Assassins have relationships with one another. None of these people really met or shared interests. In fact, they often felt isolated and unheard. I think that it's really noteworthy that Weidman and Sondheim are suggesting that these assassins are in a kind of alternate society. This show seems to suggest that there will always be an undertow of unsatisfied and unheard people in this nation, and the thought of them banding together the way they do in Assassins is terrifying. The other choice that I find noteworthy is the decision to add the song "Something Just Broke" to the revival score. Previously, the show was about the nine assassins and their point of view. Someone seeing the original production would likely have left the theater feeling no resolution or sympathy for anyone but the nation. In the case of the revival, this new song told the stories of everyday Americans who experienced the consequences of these assassins and their actions. I think that that completely changes the way that someone would view the play and the central story of the play.
Assassins crew love again! I love your comment about how the assassins have relationships with each other in the world of the play, which of course they didn't in real life. It certainly adds to the creepy air and other worldliness of the play. It's interesting that in some scenes, like the bar scene, even though they are together they still feel alone and misunderstood. On the other hand, in the Lee Harvey Oswald scene they rally together as a family of sorts to support him in what he's about to do. Like I spoke about in Sara's post, it's the idea that in this world they are the only ones who are right. They all understand each other, even though to us it's absolutely insane. In this world their national anthem is the only national anthem, and we all just need to join in and sing along.
ReplyDelete