Review: ASSASSINS, Chichester Festival Theatre

If you weren’t quite sure of whom Peter Forbes was suggesting as The Proprietor, he soon does that bizarre air-punching thing that Donald Trump favours when walking out on stage. We’re in the Land Of The Free, we can see the successor of Betsy Ross’ flag being waved higher and we are submerged in the hyperreality of a Republican (or even, these days, Democrat) Convention. Lizzie Clacan’s design is a triumph, a story told before a word is spoken or sung.

We meet the assassins of the title. Like they were then and will be in the future, they are amongst us, called forth by the avatar of the man who called such forces to his aid on the 6 January 2021. They rise from their seats and make their way to the stage to collect their weapons. None look at ease with themselves, jumpy and nervous, occupying a slightly different headspace to ours. It’s a comforting thought - the Lone Wolf theory personified - and then you think of the people you see in the supermarket shouting at shop assistants, the passengers on buses refused a free ride and determined to threaten the driver, most of all, the keyboard warriors pumping out Twitter’s sewage from the safe haven of anonymity.

Of all the slew of productions in the post-pandemic period that place mental health front and centre, nowhere is it more foregrounded than in Stephen Sondheim and John Weidman’s strange, upsetting, darkly funny show, now a third of a century old.

The first assassin we meet is John Wilkes Booth, the failed actor born a hundred years too soon for the silver screen, a medium that would ideally suit his matinee idol looks. Danny Mac gives the Confederate a bold charisma, the natural leader of the assassins who assemble, like misguided avengers, in the afterlife. Of all the killers, successful and unsuccessful, Abraham Lincoln’s is the most political, his act of vengeance for The South as much one of terrorism as of gratification.

Though Weidman’s book can be a little unstructured, veering between a revue and a more conventional, if slipping, narrative and Polly Findlay’s breathless all-through 110 minutes gives us little time to work out where we are, Sondheim’s songs catch personality and period with his usual showy efficiency. From the opener’s underlining of the framing device, “Everybody’s Got The Right”, to the showstopping duet between the superb Jack Shaloo (John Hinckley) and Carly Mercedes Dyer (Lynette Fromme), the music and lyrics fuse to create a sense of historical and psychological specificity that may be unrivalled in musical theatre in its fleeting detail. 

Harry Hepple vests Charles Giteau with an unhinged clownishness, his psychosis leading to the shooting of President James Garfield. Sam Oladeinde lends a sad desperation to the anarchist, Leon Czolgosz, whose rejection of the economic order led him to assassinate President William McKinley. Nick Holder might be the scariest of them all, increasingly more aggressive in recording his grievances against Leonard Bernstein (true!) and President Richard Nixon, before plotting to fly a plane into the White House. We all know someone a bit like Sam Byck. 

The singing is of the highest standard throughout, as impressive an ensemble as one could hope to hear. Jo Cichonska leads a 13 piece orchestra which navigates Sondheim’s virtuoso evocation of different periods of American music beautifully, if occasionally just a little too loudly. It is in the fusion of the voices and the instruments that the characters come to life, their death wishes less the acts of madmen and more the acts of those who need help that was not forthcoming. They deserve at least some compassion alongside the condemnation. 

Ultimately, that’s the thought that lingers. We can see elements of Narcissistic Personality Disorder in all the assassins, the low self-esteem oscillating with the grandiose sense of entitlement leading to the fatal curdling of neuroses into full blown psychoses and one can’t help but worry. Advertising, social media and even mainstream politics have weaponised such emotions for cynical gain - do they not know where they will lead?       

Assassins is at Chichester Festival Theatre until 24 June

Photo Credit: Johan Persson

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