Charlene Baldridge | Downtown News
Stephen Sondheim is an acquired taste. He is the thinking person’s musical theater composer. It helps if one’s thinking is somewhat bizarre. Sometimes even those who are Sondheim fans are brought up short by the composer’s lesser-known works such as the largely neglected 1990 off-Broadway show, “Assassins,” which is playing at Cygnet’s Theatre in Old Town through April 28. As the nation’s leaders struggle to enact stricter gun control legislation, a more appropriate piece cannot be imagined.
“Assassins” is an acquired taste, too. There is no protagonist, and because all the characters are angry and deranged, and because Sondheim and book writer John Weidman conceived the piece as a carnival sideshow, it is unsettling and in your face. And why not? That is the intent.
The characters are assassins or would-be assassins and their targets, U.S. presidents. Not all the assassins are remembered. Not all were successful. That is also the point.
In the show’s final scene Lee Harvey Oswald (Jacob Caltrider, who also portrays the Ballad Singer) must be persuaded to kill Pres. John F. Kennedy because the act will burn the names of all assassins in the public memory. Twisted logic? You bet. That’s Sondheim, too.
The show gets underway in a gun shop, where the proprietor (Andy Collins, aided by his physical stature and costume designer Shirley Pierson’s creepy Wild West get up) sells firearms.
Among the purchasers are Leon Czolgosz (Jason Maddy), who shot William McKinley; John Hinckley, Jr. (Kürt Norby), who attempted to kill Ronald Reagan; John Wilkes Booth (Braxton Molinaro), who assassinated Abraham Lincoln; Lee Harvey Oswald, who killed John F. Kennedy; and Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme (Melissa Fernandes) and Sara Jane Moore (Melinda Gilb), who together separately (17 days apart) sought to kill Gerald Ford. Other killers and would-be killers are Charles Guiteau (Geno Carr), Giuseppe Zangara (Jaycob Hunter) and Samuel Byck (Manny Fernandes). The program notes include the names of still others, mentioned or not by Sondheim and Weidman.
Also in the company, Sandy Campbell provides a finely drawn Emma Goldman, and bystanders are Bryan Banville, Stewart Calhoun and Mitzi Michaels. Musical numbers include “The Ballad of Booth,” “How I Saved Roosevelt,” “Unworthy of Your Love,” “November 22, 1963,” and “Everybody’s Got the Right (to be happy).”
Melinda Gilb and Melissa Fernandes, who are so extraordinary that someone must write them their own musical, provide moments of extreme black comedy. Aside from uniformly excellent articulation of Sondheim’s outrageous lyrics, the production’s major assets are Sean Murray’s clean direction, Ryan Grossheim’s two-level shooting gallery set, Chris Rynne’s lighting and Matt Lescault-Wood’s sound design.
Thanks to Peter Herman’s wigs and makeup and Pierson’s costumes, the actors become ringers for their historical characters.
Take your sardonic funny bone. The entire show is a mordant joke. While you’re there, enjoy music director Patrick Marion’s flawless six-member band.
Just as Cygnet intends to deepen its relationship with August Wilson, the theater company will extend its ongoing reputation for super Sondheim (“A Month in the Country,” “Sweeney Todd”). Recently Murray announced that the company’s 11th season opens with “Company.”
“Assassins” continues at 7:30 p.m. Wednesdays and Thursdays, 8 p.m. Fridays, 3 & 8 p.m. Saturdays, and 2 & 7 p.m. Sundays, through April 28 at Cygnet’s Old Town Theatre, 4040 Twiggs St., Old Town San Diego, cygnettheatre.com or 619-337-1525.
Charlene Baldridge moved to San Diego from the Chicago area in 1962. She’s been writing about the arts since 1979, and has had her features, critiques, surveys and interviews included in various publications ever since. She just released a chapbook of poems by her late daughter, called “The Warrior’s Stance.” She can be reached at [email protected].
