Assassins, A Little Night Music, etc. from Sondheim “The Story So Far”

Posted by Sony BMG Masterworks

October 4, 2008

By Daniel Felsenfeld

Personally, I like theatre to go to extremes. In college, I loved Tenessee Williams, Wedekind, Joe Orton, Howard Barker, Howard Korder, the Peter Brook production of Marat/Sade, and Bertolt Brecht (especially his collaborations with Kurt Weill). They seemed to not just show the same thing onstage that we could see in life but with snappier dialogue, but seemed to aim for a particular kind of catharsis that needed to be achieved through discomfort, if not actual pain. Sondheim skirts this kind of discomfort—Sweeney Todd is gloriously garish, but it is a horror movie; Company raises issues that must have been really confusing to the chattering class in 1970s New York; Pacific Overtures deals boldly with the Moloch of Americanization through Asian fable—but never really quite gets there, not, at least, until Assassins, which for this reason alone stands it as my favorite show by the great theatre genius.

The two tracks from this show included in The Story So Far scratch only the surface of how truly extreme this show really is. The first, “Everybody’s Got the Right to be Happy” features a carnival barker (shades of Lulu or Poulenc’s Mammeles perhaps?) begging the desolate souls who will come to be presidential assassins to come in and commit their crimes. He beckons, for example, John Hinkley, to “come and get the prize with those big blue eyes / skinny little thighs and those big blue eyes,” a reference to Reagan’s would-be assassin and his obsession with a certain actress in the film Taxi Driver. Gross, but entrancing; uncomfortable, yes, but makes a point, a beautiful one, about the way in which people are taught to think that the mere fact that “…everybody’s got the right to be happy” might entice the less sane among us to murder.

Even creepier is “The Ballad of Booth,” a soulful aria from the man who shot Lincoln. Booth is the star of Assassins (“here comes our pioneer” they all beam as he enters), his exploits being so important that he needs a balladeer to tell his tale. Like Kurt Weill jazzing up MacHeath in Mac the Knife (it has always baffled me as this clever little number about a brutal and unrepentant murderer has made the rounds, even announcing the fact that MacDonalds would stay open late countrywide; sometimes I feel we do live in a surrealist painting). S ondheim gives Booth cause, soul, and some of his most aching melodies. On the run, Booth the actor dictates to his sideman the reasons he shot the president (though the Balladeer disagrees: “…they say it wasn’t Lincoln John / you merely had a slew of bad reviews”). He begs for his story to told, how he “…killed the man who killed my country,” and how the “…nation can never again be the hope that it was.” But then he twists, “…how the union could never recover / from that vulgar, high-and-mighty, nigger lover / never” and wham! Sondheim has twisted the knife, led us down a particular path and then dumped some horrors from the mouth of he who sang it. We almost believe him, and it gets us to question a lot in ourselves. Booth loses us here, though he continues, but the lingering agreement we felt with him does not flee so quickly. Catharsis through discomfort. And then, Sondheim gives us another twist, as suddenly the Balladeer is able to mock Booth as a madman whose cause was asserted against him (“…Lincoln who got mixed reviews / because of you John now gets only raves”). Exquisite, morally complicated, all set to fingerpicking, old-timey music.

Other tracks on this set traffic in Sondheim’s trademark irony—“Send in the Clowns” from A Little Night Music, one of the lovlies non-love songs ever written; “Pretty Lady” from Pacific Overtures, gorgeous trio about sailors finding “love” in a brothel; and “The Ladies who Lunch” from Company, a nice little light rumba about a dying breed of upper-crust bitches—but none so gloriously ugly as those from Assassins. I personally remember a planned revival in New York some years ago, called off immediately following 9/11. I guess people were not ready to be ironic about dead presidents.

The Podcast about this show isn’t until January 20^th, so I’ll be back to remind you then. Don’t miss it, as this really is an extraordinary piece of difficult theatre. With some really catchy tunes…

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In This Blog:
Stephen Sondheim: The Story So Far …

Click HERE to listen to the Stephen Sondheim Podcast Series!!