Apple Tree Theatre, 595 Elm Place, Highland Park
Tickets $25.00 and $28.00
Thru October 27th.
The theatre is not always nice. Nor should it be. That's why shows like Stephen Sondheim and John Weidman's Assassins should be done more often. Apple Tree's current production of this oft-maligned musical is everything it should be.
I have often been surprised by the press surrounding Assassins. It seems that critics and audiences alike have turned their backs on this show. Maybe it's because of the subject matter, maybe because they feel it is unrealistic, but maybe, just maybe, it's because people have forgotten how to suspend their disbelief.
Assassins, which opened Off-Broadway in December of 1990, received a lukewarm reception and closed after 73 performances. I will admit, it is a different kind of show. The majors characters include John Wilkes Booth, Lee Harvey Oswald, John Hinckley and Lynnette "Squeaky" Fromme. Not your usual "heroes". Especially in a musical whose theme is "everybody's got the right to be happy."
Apple Tree's production is set in a carnival-like atmosphere, a bizarre netherworld occupied by Presidential assassins and would be assassins. One by one, the assassins come forward to tell their stories. We learn quite a bit about these misfits. We don't necessarily sympathize with them, but we are able to understand why they were driven to do what earned them their 15 minutes of fame (obviously, some of them have had a lot more than 15 minutes). We meet John Wilkes Booth, an angry Confederate-supporter disgusted by Abraham Lincoln's anti-slavery position; Guiseppe Zangarra, an Italian immigrant who believed that if he assassinated FDR (he actually ended up killing Chicago mayor Anton Cermack instead), his stomach pain would go away; Samuel Byck, an unemployed loser, who was killed trying to implement his assassination plot on Richard Nixon; Leon Czolgosz, a factory worker whose love for activist Emma Goldman drove him to kill William McKinley; John Hinckley, whose obsession with Jody Foster led to a failed assassination attempt on Ronald Reagan; "Squeaky" Fromme, who tried to assassinate Gerald Ford in order to give Charles Manson an opportunity to address the world at her trial; Sara Jane Moore, a former FBI agent who, in an attempt to get back into the FBI, attempted to assassinate Gerald Ford; and Charles Guiteau, a Lawyer turned Evangelist turned Author, who decided to assassinate James Garfield when he was not appointed Ambassador to France. It's a motley assortment. Through all of this, however is a voice of reason, the Balladeer, dressed in overalls, in effect telling each of the killers that what they did was the easy way out.
The most controversial scene comes late in the show, however. The lights come up to reveal a man in a white T-shirt in a stockroom filled with boxes of books. We realize we are in the Texas Schoolbook Depository on November 22, 1963 and we are looking at Lee Harvey Oswald. In walks John Wilkes Booth, who, along with the rest of the assassins, past and future, convinces him to kill JFK. Unlike other critics, I do not feel that Sondheim and Weidman were trying to "solve" the JFK mystery. It is simply a fantastical scene that illustrates the seductive power that assassinating a President can have on certain people.
Director Gary Griffin has created a production that brilliantly shows us the other side of the American Dream. A few scenes fall flat, but overall, he paints us a picture of despair and hopelessness in an America that is supposed to be "the land of the free." Particularly effective is "Another National Anthem", an anti-patriotic hymn with the assassins, marching with a limp, show their anger toward "the American way." Griffin and Musical Director Tom Murray have assembled a cast with magnificent voices that effectively portray their real-life counterparts, and a chorus of five actors who play an assortment of supporting characters throughout the evening. The cast is terrific; notably Kurt Johns as the vainglorious Booth, James FitzGerald as the manic jack-of-all-trades, master-of-none Guiteau, Benjamin Shields as the obsessed Hinckley, Sara Rene Martin as the dangerous but sweet "Squeaky" Fromme, Anne Gunn as the housewife on the edge Sara Jane Moore, and McKinley Carter, whose soaring soprano leads the beautiful "Something Just Broke", a ballad reminiscent of Sondheim's later musical "Passion", that features the ensemble members, showing the after effect of a presidential assassination from the side of the American people.
Perhaps one of the reasons this production is so effective is that it (as written) runs 85 minutes with no intermission. An intermission would only interrupt the atmosphere that these performers work so hard to establish. This Assassins gets my vote.
