Assassins, MTC, 17 March 1995

 

 Music & Lyrics by Stephen Sondheim & Book by John Weidman

By Melbourne Theatre Company

At Fairfax Studio, Melbourne Arts Centre, until April 1, 1995

This review was published in The Melbourne Times after 17 March 1995. KH

 

Stephen Sondheim cannot write a bad musical; nor can he compose an ordinary melody nor construct a banal lyric. He deals exclusively in challenging ideas. Look at Sweeney Todd, A Little Night Music, and now, Assassins, which takes a pot shot at the men and women who have tried and / or succeeded in assassinating a U.S. president.

 

Roger Hodgman's MTC production is hilarious and challenging entertainment. The style is Brechtian, almost vaudeville. Sondheim calls it ‘revue’. The four-piece band was exceptional and Tony Tripp's shooting gallery design extremely evocative.

 

Presidential assassinations may seem a bizarre choice for a comic musical and, when it opened during the Gulf War, Assassins was criticised for trivialising the subject. In the flesh, it is a passionate piece; passionate about the deaths (everybody remembers where they were when Kennedy was shot) and deeply emotional about the pathetic lives of the killers and their warped motives.

 

The lyrics by Sondheim and book (by John Weidman) are an indictment of the unrealistic expectations raised by US hegemony that every boy can be President; "You can climb to any height." These assassins represent the outsiders, the losers. "We're the ones who can't get into the ballpark."

 

The cast was strong in both voice and performance. All were impeccably, some uncannily, cast by Hodgman.  Bruce Myles as Samuel Byck gives a beautifully textured performance with detailed and deeply touching monologues and John O'May as Lincoln 's assassin, with his rich and resonant voice, is a charismatic presence in the intimate space of the Fairfax.

 

This is a beauty. Seeit!