Assassins, 25.11.14

It’s a strangely consistent phenomenon but London Sondheim productions have the knack of out-classing the original New York ones (judging those from their cast recordings).

The Menier did it before with landmark productions of “Sunday in the Park” (2005/6) and “A Little Night Music” (2008/9).  Jamie Lloyd's stupendous production of “Assassins” was no exception. Quite simply it never put a foot wrong, speeding by in 105 minutes, no mean feat for a show whose ‘bitter-and-twisted’ complexity has a reputation for being difficult to bring off. And Motley was fortunate enough to have front-row preview-week seats only inches away from the performers.

 

Director Jamie Lloyd

Sondheim’s tartly pungent 1991 musical imagines a fraternity of U.S. presidential assassins encouraging each other in their serial attempts to change history at the point of a gun (“All you have to do / Is move your little finger”).  Nine assassins, one composite blood-spattered President (hunky Simon Lipkin) and a chorus of five ordinary Joes were complemented musically by an octet directed on piano by Alan Williams.  The even-cleverer-than-usual libretto paid meta-theatrical hommage to that other famous stage failure Willy Loman (“Attention must be paid!”). 

Aaron Tveit as Lincoln's
assassin John Wilkes Booth

Soutra Gilmour’s fairground set, overlaced with a cobweb of multi-coloured light-bulbs, brought out the ludic elements in the piece, while her period costumes anchored each assassin to their specific historical context.  Neon bulbs lit up the words “Hit” and “Miss” either side of the stage after each assassination attempt, proceeding non-chronologically from John Wilkes Booth (silky-voiced Broadway import Aaron Tveit) to Lee Harvey Oswald. Successful assassins were rewarded with a shower of scarlet confetti before expiring on stage in their ensuing executions. 

Mike McShane (almost unrecognisable without beard or half his former bulk) was particularly unnerving as Nixon’s failed assassin, Samuel Byck, the epitomy of brooding Seventies suburban menace in Santa costume and dodgem-car, pouring bile into a tape recorder (appropriately enough) for onward transmission to his (imaginary) “friend” Lenny Bernstein. 

Catherine Tate taking pot-shots at
Colonel Sanders in readiness for her character's
failed attempt on the life of Gerald Ford

Catherine Tate provided more evidence of her impeccable comic timing and talent for accents playing failed Ford assassin, cooky West Virginian Sara Jane Moore.  Lithe and hirsute Stewart Clarke (a National Youth Music Theatre newcomer) did a mean accent as Zangara, FDR’s failed Italian assassin, expectorating vigorously over the stage in mid-electrocution.  Ex-“History Boy” Jamie Parker doubled up as a bluegrass banjo-playing Balladeer, initially a voice of popular reason who transmogrifies sinisterly for the finale into Lee Harvey Oswald (presented here as a kind of ‘assassin’s assassin’). 

Jamie Parker (Balladeer/Lee Harvey Oswald) &
Simon Lipkin (Presidential composite)

A succession of toe-tappingly good musical numbers lifted a show always at risk of being ‘brought down’ by its cast of losers, revealing properly to Motley for the first time the quality of Sondheim’s score. From Leon Czolgosz’s “Gun Song” (pitch-perfect Polish accent from David Roberts) to Charles Guiteau’s “I am going to the Lordie” (an alarmingly manic Andy Nyman) to John Hinckley’s “Unworthy of your love” (Harry Morrison and Carly Bawden duetting in Seventies polyester) the singing was uniformly great. 

The show bowed out with the full troop of assassins singing the deliciously dark choral number “Everybody’s got the right to be happy ..  everybody’s got the right to their dreams”.  It may seem odd given the subject matter but you left the intimate Menier auditorium on a real high, conscious of having seen something special. Motley's nomination for best London show of 2014.
 

[Preview week so no shots yet of the cast in character]