Assassins!

So, last week, I saw a performance of Stephen Sondheim’s Assassins! at the Signature Theater in Arlingon, Virginia. (Many thanks to lovely fiancée KEL for sacrificing the ticket.) Overall, I enjoyed the show. The music was great, the lyrics were clever, and, despite a few awkward exchanges of dialogue (usually where characters gave each other biographical information, Sorkin-style), it drew laughs and left stunned silences in the right places. But, leaving, I felt a little flat, and I’ve been gnawing at that reaction ever since. Some of it may been a sense of enervation by the actor playing the Balladeer. But I think some of it also has to do with that character in general.

The postmodern conceit of the show – part-revue featuring everyone who’s tried to shoot a US President, part-Pirandello’s “Six Characters in Search of an Author” – kept me interested, enough so that, during the course of the show, I lost track of which assassins had gotten their time in the spotlight and which hadn’t. So I didn’t catch on until close to the end that the sour-faced Balladeer was supposed to be Lee Harvey Oswald. And that’s the big narrative drive of the show. All of these assassinations, from Booth through Hinckley, are just setting up or pointing back to Oswald in the Dallas Book Depository, and Lee’s choice to shoot Kennedy becomes the climax of the show.

Now, I grew up Irish Catholic in Massachusetts, and had parents who came of age during Camelot. I’ve been exposed to the JFK mystique, and I understand that, to a generation, his assassination was a – if not the – pivotal event of their lives. But, from a dramatic standpoint, I wonder if it doesn’t weaken the show. The Balladeer gets a lot of stagetime, but very little development, as if it’s enough for Sondheim that he’s “Lee-Harvey-frikkin-Oswald.”

Only, it’s not. The Balladeer -- especially once it's clear he's Oswald -- comes off as dull, and his role doesn’t quite make sense. He’s a reluctant assassin who nonetheless knows everything important about his predecessors. And, frankly, the other assassins are more interesting than he is. Even Hinckley – whom I think was supposed to come off as bland and vaguely creepy, sitting in the corner in a Barracuda jacket fingering a beat-up guitar – managed to upstage him. He needed more development. His existence was not enough on its own.

So what’s the lesson I’m trying to pull out of this? Maybe that historic importance is not the same as dramatic importance. It can certainly have an effect. But just pointing to something and saying “Look! Historical! Important!” won’t convince the audience on its own.