The Stephen Sondheim musical “Assassins” feels both incredibly strange and painfully relevant.
That’s not to say it isn’t fascinating or mostly brilliant, which it is. Sondheim’s critically cynical and satirical score offers comic and piercing lushness that can haunt in genuine ways, questioning the motives of 10 individuals who have become famous, or more accurately, infamous, for all the wrong reasons. Strange, yes, but ‘tis wondrous strange. And that which makes the piece such an oddity is also what assists in its brilliance.
It made it even stranger to see the show, produced by San Jose Playhouse, the very day after an assassination attempt on former president Donald Trump, the first attempted assassination on a current or former United States president since Ronald Reagan survived a bullet in 1981.
Any assassination attempt moves quickly into the rearview mirror, as the commencement of wall-to-wall coverage and attempts to dissect every angle follows quickly. The blood sport of trying to figure out who these demented shooters are keeps them in news cycles and history books for eternity.
While the musical is far from perfect, with disparate components that don’t always cohere, it is still a challenging and thought-provoking piece to consume, made more challenging by current events. This production has many effective moments, but at other times it isn’t as crisp as it should be.
A balladeer (Jeremy Kreamer) provides the context for the proceedings, which are set inside a shooting gallery where the fun and games of pulling triggers as sport have powerful targets. Some of the most notorious assassins in history make an appearance, including John Wilkes Booth (Stephen Guggenheim), John Hinckley (Ryan Sammonds), Leon Czolgosz (Omar Alejandro) and the bumbling team of Sara Jane Moore (Hayley Aviva) and Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme (Alexandra Shephard), with their very odd relationship to Colonel Sanders.
The world is established immediately, with the opening tableau showcasing the assassins in a straight line, which makes metaphoric and logistic sense, an all-star lineup of the worst hall of fame ever. But what haunts about this particular moment is how off these folks are made to look. There is something soul-sucking about each face, mouths turned down, eyes full of glazed gaunt with steely-ill intention. Sondheim’s brilliance, along with book writer John Weidman, is in how each motivation of the assassin is varied in scope.
Just notice the creepiness of Sammonds’ Hinckley, who targeted Reagan in order to get the attention of Jodie Foster, one of the strangest intentions of these assassins. There’s also Charles Guiteau (Dario Johnson), the man who killed president James A. Garfield after being cast aside as ambassador to France. Johnson’s strong presence and rich voice offers both disgust and empathy to Guiteau’s arc.
Whether it is the glory of fame, the desires of legacy, abject anger at one thing or another or the perverse belief that someone must be destroyed for the greater good, the critical satire and irony of the piece works extremely well.
Many new faces and a few regulars on the 3Below stage make for effective casting choices. Kreamer’s balladeer, who frames many of our interactions with these assassins, morphs disturbingly into Lee Harvey Oswald, with great attention to what pushed a depressed seeker to move towards those miscreants who came before him. Playhouse veteran Rick Haffner delivers much of the disturbing irony as would be Richard Nixon assassin Samuel Byck in an oddly effective monologue.
The harmonious nature of the design lays out a critical scene for each disturbing and unsettling moment that the characters offer. Songs such as “The Ballad of Booth,” “The Gun Song,” “Everybody’s Got the Right” and “November 22, 1963” live smartly within Shannon Guggenheim’s video design, as well as in Scott Guggenheim and Jon Gourdine’s scenic work and S.E. Copperman’s costumes.
The best theater is often that which can prove timely, no matter when it is produced. Watching a piece such as “Assassins” is to witness a show that has relevance in our current zeitgeist, informing what is on the stage seamlessly with what is outside the theater walls. Sadly, at a time for our nation where polarization feels to be at an all time high, a show written in 1990 may be as timely as it’s ever been.
David John Chávez is chair of the American Theatre Critics Association and a two-time juror for the Pulitzer Prize for Drama (‘22-‘23); @davidjchavez.
‘ASSASSINS’
Music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, book by John Weidman, presented by San Jose Playhouse
Through: Aug. 4
Where: 3Below Theaters, 288 S. Second St., San Jose
Running time: 90 minutes, no intermission
Tickets: $45-$65; sanjoseplayhouse.org
