By Russ Tarby
Contributing Writer
Weird, wacky and somewhat surreal.
What else could you expect from a Broadway musical focusing on America’s tendency to murder its leaders? With the award-winning music man Stephen Sondheim composing the tunes, you should expect lush arrangements, memorable melodies and multi-layered harmonies, and you won’t be disappointed.
With Baker High teacher Colin Keating directing the seven-piece pit band, the current Baldwinsville Theatre Guild staging of “Assassins” is certainly musically satisfying. Unfortunately, playwright John Weidman’s convoluted story line and elusive point of view fail to communicate any real meaning or message to its audiences.
Well-respected local actress/director Shannon Tompkins admits as much in her program note: “This show is not exactly typical,” Tompkins warns. “It doesn’t flow in any kind of order really. It is a mashup of time periods and a mixing of historical characters that can throw you off balance — as it is most likely meant to.”
Off balance is right. Instead of getting historical perspective and any relevant commentary, audiences are bombarded with the simplest and silliest myths and cliches. This motley crew of killers is depicted as largely suicidal, a bunch of bitter losers and lone nuts. Toward the end of the two-hour performance, the cast harmonizes, “We are the lost ones.”
The show’s saving grace is its humor, although the comedy’s inconsistent and awkwardly juxtaposed with serious dialogue and bold balladeering.
Comic highlights include scenes pairing Hali Greenhouse as Squeaky Fromme and Janie Wainwright as Sara Jane Moore, two absurdly inept California crazies who each failed to shoot President Gerald Ford in 1975. Their back-and-forth banter on a park bench culminates in a hilarious interruption by Moore’s whining son, Billy, enthusiastically portrayed by Oswego seventh-grader Nathan Carr.
Wainwright’s Sara Jane seems to channel Fran Drescher while Greenhouse’s Squeaky oozes wild-eyed obsessions like Tracey Ullman on acid. As Charles Guiteau, the oddball office-seeker who shot President James Garfield in 1881, actor Bill Doolittle draws plenty of guffaws with his reluctant climb up the gallows.
And the youthful Nic MacLane as would-be Ronald Reagan assassin John Hinckley Jr., inspires laughter when he requests an autograph from Lee Harvey Oswald, the alleged killer of John F. Kennedy in 1963, played here by Ben Sills, who doubles as The Balladeer.
The real star of “Assassins” is Casey J. Ryan as John Wilkes Booth, a famous actor who shot Abe Lincoln in 1865. Ryan swaggers and struts around the stage the way Booth played Shakespeare, and his presence dominates meetings with Giuseppe Zangara (who took a potshot at president-elect Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1933, played here with a convincing Italian accent by Justin Bird), Leon Czolgosz (who killed president Bill McKinley in 1901, portrayed by lanky Tallon Larham), and Ryan’s Booth is strongest when talking down a suicidal Lee Harvey Oswald before putting a Mannlicher-Carcano in his hands.
As the anarchist Emma Goldman, actress Ceara Windhausen turns in a particularly strong performance, complete with Goldman’s Yiddish inflections. Her lines are among the fewest that make any sense in this show, as Goldman decries the lack of social justice in “the land of the free.”
Portraying failed airplane-bound assassin Samuel Byck, who hoped to crash into Richard Nixon’s White House in 1974, actor Alex Gilbert brilliantly captured Byck’s South Philadelphia accent as well as his overblown ego. Actor Alex Cupelo exudes evil as the play’s well-armed Proprietor, topped with a jaunty black derby.
Just as the unfolding action is a tattered mishmash, Josh Taylor’s stunning set design framed in countless shreds of torn Old Glories aptly reflects the way political violence has repeatedly ripped out the heart of our nation. A catwalk outlined with strings of tiny light bulbs runs across the back of the stage, suggesting the place is — what? — a social hall, perhaps. Or is it a shooting gallery?
In any case, “Assassins” keep you guessing.
“Assassins” continues at the First Presbyterian Education Center, 64 Oswego St., at 7:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday, Oct. 25 and 26, at 3 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 27 and at 8 p.m. Nov. 1 and 2. Tickets cost $28, and $24 for students and seniors; baldwinsvilletheatreguild.org; 315-877-8465.
