Review: ASSASSINS at Brookfield Theatre

Brookfield Theatre opened 2026 with a bang, or rather, quite a few with its production of Assassins. John Weidman’s book and Stephen Sondheim’s music and lyrics may have been ahead of their time when the show opened on Broadway in 1990. The common thread of the people depicted in the musical is their intense feeling of being let down by POTUS. In today’s polarizing political climate, it is a huge theater statement piece for any theater company to make.

And huge it is. Assassins went through some changes in the number of people who tried to assassinate the president. Brookfield Theatre used the latest version which features nine assassins – John Wilkes Booth (played by Steven Taliaferro), Charles Guiteai (Jason Styka), Giuseppi Zangara (Matt Austin), Sam Byck (Sean Latasa),  Leon Czolgosz (Pedro Couy), Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme (Emma Burke-Covitz), Sara Jane Moore (Tanya Willis), John Hinckley (Eric Lewin), and Lee Harvey Oswald (a dual role, including the Balladeer, fluidly played by the androgenous looking Izzy Porter). Supporting roles are the Proprietor (Emma Duffy), Emma Goldman (Angie Joachim), Billy (Lazarus Bell), and the ensemble made up of Susan Chapin, Paul Mayer, Shawn Brown, Erin Shaughnessy, RJ Knippel, Ellis Bell, Barry Schilmeister, and Oran Matheson. Matheson also expertly directed and choreographed the show.

The show is framed around a somewhat sinister carnival booth with shooting range which later gets swiveled into the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository building. The proprietor eggs them on to "shoot the Prez and win a prize." They want to assassinate the president because they feel cheated out of the prize – the American dream - they were promised after years of hard work. Vignettes include Guiteau’s toasts to the Presidency of the United States while speaking of his ambition to become Ambassador to France. Czolgosz goes into a rage when Hinckley accidentally breaks a bottle because of the horrors Czolgosz witnessed at the bottle factory where he works in. Booth suggest that Zangara’s stomach pains can be fixed by shooting FDR. Fromme and Moore sit on a park bench and recall how they met mass murderer Charles Manson. The most interesting character is the Balladeer who is a one-person Greek chorus who tells part of Booth’s story and suggests that his motives had more to do with his personal life than with Lincoln’s freeing the slaves. The Balladeer morphs into a very vulnerable and broken Lee Harvey Oswald and is convinced into shooting JFK.

The book is flawed because its timeline is not always easy to follow as characters come in again at some unexpected times. But the show is timely with the turmoil going on in the world, particularly in the U.S. and the Middle East.  

Most of the set is mostly bare, which works well for the show as well as adding to the isolation and grimness of the would-be assassins’ lives. It runs for two hours with no intermission, but it doesn’t feel long or dragged out. The music is a combination of traditional patriotic-type songs as well as music that evokes the times of the people who wanted to assassinate the president. The production skimps on nothing, and we were happy that there was a full orchestra under the music direction of Joy Giuseffi. Musicians also included Nate Wardlaw on the synthesizer, Gary Orlofsky on the guitar, banjo, and mandolin, Don Hurta on bass, Kelsey Marrocco and Adam Wiley on reeds, Becket Bottelsen on trumpet, and Bob Kogut on percussion.

The creative crew includes stage manager Ali Michalek and assistant stage manager Richard Iverson, Olivia Kirby, Andrew Okell, Bob Lane, Andrés Idrovo Castillo, and Amy Caco (set), Lou Okell (producer), Pippa Walton (intimacy coordinator), Bill Sopchak (sound), Lou Okell and Milla Bell (lighting and projections), and Em Foley (costumes).

Kudos to the Brookfield Theatre of the Arts for producing another show that’s sure to evoke thought and discussion. Last fall it staged M Butterfly, which has greater meaning for today’s younger audiences than when the show first opened in 1988.