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Lily Janiak
Wednesday, October 17, 2012
SFWeekly
When Galen Murphy-Hoffman enters the stage in Shotgun's
production of Assassins, you recognize his character
immediately. The ashen complexion, the mustache, the frock coat,
the fixed, ghostly stare: a portrait straight out of a history
textbook.
But in this Stephen Sondheim musical, John Wilkes
Booth is not just an eerie image of, as the lyrics go, the villain
who brought the nation "to its knees" or "paved
the way for other madmen." Susannah Martin's sensitively
directed production shows Booth and other would-be and actual
presidential assassins as people who express the typical frustrations
with society but, unlike everyone else, refuse to let society
stifle them.
The production resonates with election-year narratives.
Sam Byck (a disturbing Ryan Drummond) tape-records messages for
his target, Richard Nixon, and also his idol, Leonard Bernstein,
which reflect the truth-twisting of a certain recent presidential
debate. But the show is also timeless as an achievement in musical
theater; its storytelling is just as complex as Sondheim's notoriously
manic melodies.
The stories don't proceed chronologically but rather
weave together across time and space. John Hinckley Jr. (Danny
Cozart) and Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme (Cody Metzger)
come together for a sappy ballad about unrequited love, while
Booth persuades Lee Harvey Oswald (Kevin Singer) that killing
the president will solve all his problems. The characters are
always in dialogue with the American dream and their own historical
legacy. Sondheim and John Weidman, who wrote the musical's book,
clearly see assassination as an attempt by the assassin to rewrite
his or her own story. But history, embodied by the smug and watchful
"Proprietor" (Jeff Garrett), will always prefer its
own version.
