Review: ASSASSINS Still Stuns at Rogue Artists Theatre Of Pittsburgh

Good news and bad news, readers; I'll start with the bad. The bad news is, if you're reading this, you're already too late to see Rogue Artists' production of Stephen Sondheim and John Weidman's Assassins, as it was a one-weekend run and I was a very last-minute addition to the press list. The good news, however, is that the sold-out run and artistically successful production has all but guaranteed Rogue Artists a continued presence in Pittsburgh's reconfigured theatrical future. With two of the heavy hitters consolidated into one and the Greer reinventing itself as a rental venue more than a CLO second-space, small professional companies and cream-of-the-crop community theatres may quickly become the center of Pittsburgh's theatrical identity. 

Assassins is a famously tricky piece tonally, careening between highly theatrical melodrama, slapstick and then moments of twentieth century drama's heaviest prose material. It's one of the rare musicals that can say its book scenes and monologues are as famous and well-regarded as its songs. It's also a beast to stage, with a careening nonlinear timeline, constant tone shifts and a use of presentational, Brechtian elements. Thankfully, director Michael McKelvey keeps the production on the rails and allows a cast of Pittsburgh's finest singing character actors to shine.  

In a bar in limbo, John Wilkes Booth (Allan Snyder) holds court over a coterie of American political assassins past and present. They interact with each other both in limbo and as if they had known each other in the real world, subtly impacting the course of American history and the rot of the concept of the American Dream. In between interludes depicting their lives and assassinations, there are interjections from two dueling narrators: the Balladeer (Asher Alcantara), representing the optimism at the heart of the American Dream, and the Proprietor (Allante Walker), who represents the cynicism inherent in that vision. While at first the Proprietor reads as "bad guy" and the Balladeer as "good guy," by the end of the show, the Balladeer's cheeful naivite and Horatio Alger poptimism reveals him to be as much a villain as the overtly violent Proprietor. 

Allan Snyder, as always, commands the stage with a presence that cannot be denied. His strong voice and heroic vibe, even when playing villains, allows for one of Sondheim's deftest magic tricks: the "Ballad of Booth" presents Booth's vision of himself as a convicted populist antihero, who seeks to save the Union from Lincoln's divisive politics... until he gets heated and lets slip a particularly heavy, damning slur. The mask shatters. This was JUST the "crazy redneck" people thought he was, but with delusions. Simiarly heavy in a mostly dramatic role is Griffin Frye as Czolgosz, a disenfranchised anarchist influenced by political philosopher Emma Goldman to use violence as a tool to liberate the working man. Frye's Czolgosz is much less histrionic than most of the other assassins, and his gentle sincerity and fire make his position understandable, especially in his scene with Goldman (played with wry humor by Arkida Saiwai).

Then there are the more comedic assassins, a group of bizarre nightmare clowns. J. Alex Noble, a Pittsburgh CLO regular, was a no-brainer to fill the role of Sam Byck, Nixon's would-be killer who compulsive tape-records his rants and confessions. Noble has a bombastic, aggressive presence and an everyman physicality; his Byck pivots on a dime from violent, aggressive complaining and threatening to sudden vulnerability. This labile mood makes him terrifying, but also someone that makes you think "if he'd gotten a hug and maybe some therapy, things could have turned out differently." Connor Bahr, as narcissistic Charles Guiteau, brings a cutesy aww-shucks quality to the delusional assassin that is Kyle Gordonesque. As Guiteau think she is a showman and genius, Bahr gets to chew scenery a little more than the rest of the cast, which he clearly relishes, while interjecting looks of "gosh, I'm a bad widdle boy" that make Guiteau less someone you love to hate than someone you hate to love. Anthony Marino, one of the city's rising comedic actors, has been branching into straight drama more often lately, as those who saw his Evan Hansen can attest. Here, he threads the needle, turning his gift for physical comedy to unexpected drama instead. Giuseppe Zangara, whose physical and mental illness impacted his decision to shoot at Roosevelt more than any political convictions, is a grotesque figure in the Peter Lorre tradition. Marino brings a galvanic intensity to his electric chair confessions, while his physical clowning skills become terrifying when he uses them to depict electrocution. 

Assassination is historically a man's game, so the cast obviously tilts towards the masculine more than the feminine. Thankfully, our two leading ladies are more than up to the standard set by the men. Zanny Laird finds a peculiar warmth in Sara Jane Moore, who becomes a sister/cool aunt figure to Squeaky Fromme. Laird's Moore is cynical but funny, the sort of person you'd want to be friends with if she weren't a political assassin. Mae Ryness inverts the most common characterization of Fromme (so typically played as a spacy, bubbly hippie type) by applying a nearly flat affect to the part. She makes the Manson Family associate dispassionate and clinical about everything... except her love for Manson himself. When she sings "Unworthy of Your Love" with John Hinckley Jr (Corwin Stoddard), we see an emotion and humanity come to the surface that has curdled inside her.

The last time I saw this show was circa 2022. Things have, uh... changed since then. Political assassination used to be an aberration, one of those things that you heard about and it stopped you in your tracks. Today it's become more common than it used to be, so much so that when a politician, executive or political pundit gets shot it feels very "same as it ever was." And not all the alleged assassins are politically revolutionary Czolgosz types. Far more are Zangaras: "no left, no right," who often seem to slay within their own political movement. I spoke to a notable director after the show about our reactions to the production, and both of us agreed that the sentiment of "Something Just Broke" no longer rings quite the same in a nation so jaded and nihilistic that high-level political violence no longer even raises its blood pressure. I couldn't posit just which assassination or atrocity finally DID lose America its innocence and leave us so jaded that guns are not only discourse, but often the ONLY discourse. I just know that the words of "Another National Anthem" ring truer than they used to. Is the soul of America the Balladeer, or is the Proprietor? Maybe they're the same person after all.