Reviewed by Jodi Yeats

Why would you want to see a musical about people who tried to assassinate the president of the United States? Because it’s fun and cool.

Oliver Driver has done a great job of directing Stephen Sondheim’s 1991 musical, based on a book by John Weidman - the show is dynamic and engaging.

Reviewed by Jodi Yeats

Why would you want to see a musical about people who tried to assassinate the president of the United States? Because it’s fun and cool.

Oliver Driver has done a great job of directing Stephen Sondheim’s 1991 musical, based on a book by John Weidman - the show is dynamic and engaging.

Almost all the assassins are on stage at the same time, interacting with each other from their different historic periods and finding they have much in common.

Set designer John Verryn has decked Auckland’s Town Hall Concert Chamber out like a circus, lining walls and ceilings with fabric messily painted in stars and stripes.

Actors wear clown make up that’s messily applied and running at the edges, and dirty clothes that speak volumes about their character (costume design, Elizabeth Whiting).

The assassins are all people for whom the American dream is a shabby circus. Outsiders, they share a craving for attention and will do whatever it takes to get it.

The musical begins and ends with a song, Everybody’s Got the Right, about the American “right” to make their own destiny. In the song, the usherette is a rock star and the mailman won the lottery.

But such a dream only taunts these folk, who are among those who have no chance of getting “the prize”, and so they take their revenge.

I applaud Oliver Driver’s decision to cast actors who can sing, rather than vice versa, as all the actors have great stage presence and fill out their assassin’s character.

Natalie Medlock is compelling as Squeaky, Charles Manson’s unhinged girlfriend and has a sensational voice. Cameron Rhodes is a huge character and holds the play together with his in-your-face performance.

There’s a particularly compelling scene where Lincoln’s assassin Booth (played to a tee by Aussie actor Mitchell Butel) entices fellow successful president killer Lee Harvey Oswald (Gareth Williams) to commit to a deadly path. Oswald is treated with contempt by his wife and considers himself a failure. Booth promises him if he kills Kennedy the entire nation will feel passionate about him.

Williams also plays a dazzling “balladeer” in all white, looking like a fundamentalist minister as he lugubriously croons about each murderer’s crime. It still pays to have the programme handy to check on who all the characters are and what they did, as the actual stories add a fascinating dimension to the show.

The four-piece band is on the stage, as they often are in circuses, and they are excellent, with Mark Dennison playing a range of woodwind instruments with aplomb.

Why would you want to see a musical about assassins – because it’s a great romp, huge, gorgeous, darkly upbeat - and it will make you think.

Assassins
Silo Theatre
Directed by Oliver Driver
Auckland Town Hall Concert Chamber until 14 August
Tickets from The Edge