Assassins

Saturday, 21 March 2009

It's always a little disconcerting to be at the wrong end of a gun, and while I knew that the pistols the actors pointed right into the audience were toys, painted sinister to fit Stephen Sondheim's darkly humourous musical, I couldn't help but feel a little uneasy when the assassins stood as a collective row and sung with passion about how "Everyone's Got The Right" because they judged it to be so via the barrel of a gun.

Director Paul Treasure has brought many a complicated production to life and here is one which stars anti-heroes that would be all too easy to hate. These characters are not merely murderers, no that's far too ordinary a term for their aspirations - these people, real people in American history - sought to be something far more significant, special; and in attempting (and in most of this musical's plot succeeding) in killing the President, they have changed the way the leader of the free world interacts with ordinary Americans. He is elevated and then vilified, in that respect Australians can recognize that there may be something of a tall poppy syndrome at play here, where the ordinary resents the extraordinary.

The stage was dressed well and reminiscent of the American flag; a small musical band in the left hand corner with the backdrop of a glittery blue curtain, a curved bar to the right slashed with thick white and red. The wide empty front stage was bare - this space would be inhabited by each assassin in turn so they could build their world through song and story as we jumped backwards and forwards through time and presidents.

Peter "Pear" Carr was a strong and interweaving presence throughout the piece, not only did he play the egotistical actor assassin John Wilkes Booth, but he went on to portray president after president, giving the audience the many ways a man can die.

The ensemble was unsteady in some parts; chorus numbers were strong, however the band at times drowned out individual singers and as Sondheim puts a lot of story in his lyrics, if you didn't know the musical very well you could miss out on the clever dialogue and smart characterizations inherent in the work.

A challenging show, but proof that musical theatre is more than just singing about love and adventure - the scene when the ensemble calls as ghosts of both past and future haranguing Lee Harvey Oswald to legitimatize them by killing JFK, is truly chilling.