Hello, dear readers! I still exist, but I spend my week days making pathetic attempts to pass chemistry, leaving only my weekends available for the wonderful HainesHisWay.com. Luckily, spring break is upon us (hurrah hurrah!), so I will have some more time to spend here.
Tonight I saw the Roundabout Theatre Company's revival of "Assassins" which, I must admit, surprised me. Before I elaborate, I just want to mention that my review will most likely contain spoilers.
When I first entered the theatre, I was shocked to see that the space was left exactly as it was for "Cabaret". The thrust stage has no curtain and there are about four steps leading from the foot of the stage into the audience. Instead of having a traditional pit, half of the orchestra sits on stage left and the other stage right in the equivolent of a "normal" theatre's box seats. The orchestra seating is all table seating. The set is slightly reminiscent of the recent "Man Of La Mancha" revival's set in that it utilizes various levels of wood planking and sets of stairs for various purposes. Before the show began I had no idea what I was looking at, but as
soon as it started, it became clear that the set was made to resemble Coney Island's Cyclone roller coaster. Mantello clearly took the fair ground/shooting gallery idea and ran with it, and that proved to be a wonderful decision. The entire show is played out on this set, and it serves all different purposes while still keeping that feel of the fair ground in tact. Marc Kudisch's Proprietor is very much a presence in the show. Looking like, well, a proprietor with shaved head and tattooed arms, Kudisch rarely left the stage and sort of served as an anti-Balladeer by being this sinister figure looming over the action. While the Balladeer comments on the events taking place, the Proprietor creates them by placing guns in various assassins' hands, spinning a roulette wheel that determines which assassin would have his or her turn next, and shouting "Ding! Ding! Ding! We have a winner!" whenever an assassin hits his target. I
think that "Everybody's Got The Right" is now in a lower key, but I suppose that that doesn't really matter. The set was utilized brilliantly in this number, as the Proprietor stalks about the various levels underneath an enormous neon sign reading "Hit the prez! Win a prize!". Sadly, the following scene does not work nearly as well. While Ceveris is a terrific Booth, he seemed to
reach all the points he wanted to both physically and emotionally without building up to those moments. I'm sure that after a few more performances, that problem will no longer exist. In that scene, we're also introduced to Neil Patrick Harris as the Balladeer. Harris sounds fine, but his presence is slightly jarring because he is costumed in light colors, while literally everything else in the entire theatre is dark. Also, he sort of appears out of nowhere and, when there's already a sort of narrator in this production(the Proprietor), his presence is a bit awkward. From the next scene (the bar) onward, there was a bit of a struggle between weather or not this would be a comedy. Many performers, such as the miscast Mario Cantone, played for laughs at completely inappropriate moments, giving this portion of the show a light and campy feel. There is no question that all of
the assassins were creepy, but they didn't seem the least bit dangerous, which I think an audience needs to sense. This problem was definitely present in "How I Saved Roosevelt", as Jeffrey Kuhn did a little dance in the electric chair a la Guiteau's cake walk. In my opinion, since the same general idea is experessed in
the "Ballad Of Guiteau", that was unnecesary and out of character. For all of these scenes, the Proprietor merely sits onstage, sometimes contributing to the action (Handing Zangara the gun, strapping him into the chair...), being an incredibly creepy omnipresent figure. Interestingly, the performances seemed to get
lighter and lighter as various production elements (lighting, use of set, and the Proprietor's presence) got increasingly dark and sinister. The two joined together nicely, creating a sort of funhouse feeling that one might get after visiting a sideshow where it's all fun and games until you think about how creepy it is. Denis
O'Hare's "Ballad Of Guiteau" was incredibly disturbing, begining optimistic but then building to the point of terrifying hysteria. Truly perfect. Whenever an assassination or attempted assassination would occur, the assassin in question would turn upstage where skrims showing the silhouettes of men in suits were pulled down and shoot at their "target". If they were successful, the skrim would light up and the Proprietor would shout "WE HAVE A WINNER!" and if they were
not, a lound buzzer would sound and the Proprietor would apologize. It was interesting, and it worked very well. These skrims were seperated by wooden bars that created nine little portals. After each assassination (successful or otherwise), the assassin would back into the booth once inhabited by his "target" and, unless he was participating in a scene, spend the rest of the show there. A shadowy light was cast over them, making them look like exhibits in a wax museum, which solidified the idea of "footnotes in a history book". They also resembled caged sideshow freaks, which also
coencides with comments made during the Oswald scene. "Another National Anthem" utilized these interpretations of the portals by having the assassins spend part of the song seeming as though they're
trying to escape their "cages". In this production, instead of having the Balladeer sing most of the song, he shared it with the Proprietor who sang the more ominous parts of the narration, creating a sort of devil/angel on the shoulder effect for the rest of the
cast. During this song, it is the Proprietor who shoves the Balladeer offstage and then sets the scene for the Texas School Book Depository, which is basically just a bunch of boxes. Harris' Oswald is appropriatly understated. Throughout the scene, Booth inforces
this idea that Oswald never did anything in his life, he merely had things happen to him. I've always interpreted this scene as Oswald finally taking control of his own life and doing something, but Harris' portrayal makes it clear that this is just one more instance where Oswald is a victim of circumstance and can't made decisions for himself. He doesn't make the event happen, it happens to him. A few lines were cut from this scene ("Is Artie Bremer here tonight?" "It was a bum rap! My penis made me do it!" "Death to the enemies of Palestine!" "Of course, of course, Sirhan Sirhan." "Yeeeeha!" "And James Earl Ray! Why do these red-knecks always have three names? John Wilkes Booth, James Earl Ray..." "Lee Harvey Oswald."), which
turned out to be a very wise decision because "Another National Anthem" proved to be the turning point from the comedic and campy earlier portion of the evening to the very serious conclusion, and those funny lines would have a negative impact on the mood. The
scene was incredibly powerful and truly perfect. As soon as Oswald fires his weapon, he gets up, faces the audience, and freezes. The spotlight is taken off him and the film of Kennedy's assassination is projected onto his t-shirt. It's brilliant and terrifying. Sadly, it was followed by "Something Just Broke" which I think just doesn't work.
Interestingly, there was no audience reaction to the Kennedy assassination scene which I attribute to four factors: Nothing shocks us anymore, I think that most of the audience already knew the show, few in the audience actually lived through the Kennedy assassination (very young crowd), and after 9/11, the Kennedy assassination is no longer the great american tragedy that it once was. It's a shame that I'll never know how I would have reacted to this production had
I not already been very familiar with the show. All in all, this production managed to be both very fun and entertaining while remainingly appropriatly disturbing and, at times, terrifying.
Because of the way the Proprietor was incorporated into this production, it might have been interesting to see his role doubled with Booth. Seeing as Booth is a sort of extenstion of the Balladeer in the Oswald scene as he fills in for him by convincing Oswald to kill Kennedy (which, in this production, should be the Proprietor's job), it could have been appropriate to double the roles.
I apologize for my choppy writing, but it's late and I'm having great difficulty expressing myself. I hope that this was relatively coherent.
