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Last night I saw Assassins!
I never got to see this show the first time around. It's a shame it seems to have had such a bumpy road-seemed like every time it was going to go up something would happen where people would get overly sensitive about the subject matter (presidential assassination). To me, though, this show just says so much about...well, I want to say America but I think it also says things about modern life. But those things are related because the cult of celebrity as it exists today seems to overlap with so many things people identify with the US.
I have had the CD from the original show for years so I know the songs, which are fascinating because Sondheim was experimenting with the music of different time periods. So the song about John Wilkes Booth is written in the style of Civil War-era American folk music, while the duet between John Hinkley and Squeaky Fromme is more in the style of a sappy 70s love song. I was unprepared for the great script though--there are some amazing monologues in it and the cast was uniformly excellent. Michael Cerveris was Booth, Neil Patrick Harris (You go, Dr. Doogie!!) was Oswald. Denis O'Hare was so wonderfully crazy and sweet and chilling as Charles Guiteau. Mario Cantone was also great as Samuel Byck who basically has two long monologues in the forms of tapes he's making for Leonard Bernstein and Dick Nixon.
I liked the way the Presidents came off, the way they were sort of affectionately all made fun of--or at least their popular persona in the public memory was. Byck has a great "argument" with Nixon where he imitates them and you remember how funny Nixon impressions are. I wondered if the Reagan attempted assassination would rub anyone the wrong way given his recent death but of course Reagan came off very well there--John Hinkley (Alexander Gemignani-who frightened me by walking up on stage and just looking so much like somebody who would be in a fandom I immediately liked him...) fires and fires where Reagan gets off quips on how pathetic he is. Ford comes in with a pratfall--which again reminds me of being a kid when Ford falling down was the joke you saw everywhere. He's sort of dopey but nice, helping his would-be assassins pick up their bullets.
The staging and lighting was really interesting--it's at Studio 54 and my friend and I got champagne to sip during the show. I love having the table in front of you-v. Civilized! I think I remember reading in the original show that when Oswald fired his shot the stage switched to a giant copy of that famous photo of Oswald himself being assassinated. In this version Oswald just turned around and stood still, and he was wearing a white tee-shirt upon which they projected a movie. You couldn't see very much of it, but of course the Zabruder film is so recognizable at this point you don't need to see much to recognize it. Nice effect, I thought.
The one thing I didn't much like was the added song, "Something Just Broke," where people sing about Kennedy's assassination. This bugged me because first, none of the other presidents got reaction songs-and yes, I realize that the Kennedy assassination was a "biggie," and the play basically has Booth and Oswald as the two major characters for that reason. But I think what bothered me is it just that...I understand that everyone remembers where they were when they heard Kennedy had been shot and those kinds of things are powerful. But, like, if somebody asks me where I was on 9/11 the point of the story is not how it affected ME but the fact that this incredible thing was happening to other people. It affected me personally to an extent, of course--especially since I live in Manhattan--but that's secondary and it's not why somebody would want to know about it, exactly. But this song, and the whole attitude it seems, was more in the direction of, "Let me examine every little thing for how I feel about it and how it affects me." It was the same thing that made Colonial House so annoying. Because of that I think I felt like the song was pushing for feeling when it fell flat. I much much prefer the original score that just went straight from the gunshot to the music to the final song.
The other reason I found this song rather jarring is that it rather undercut the idea of the rest of the show, I felt. Throughout the balladeer/Oswald pokes holes in the supposed motives for all these assassinations: doing it to unify a political party, to save the country, to give Charles Manson a platform, because your stomach hurt, to stand up for the working man, to prove yourself worthy of Jodie Foster...it's not the real reason. The real idea is that very modern one: by killing a famous person, one becomes important. That's why I thought showing all these people singing about how much they were changed by Oswald's action was a bad idea. It just seemed like indulging the very thing the assassins wanted that the play is exposing: look how important I am. Obviously they *did* have an effect, but earlier the balladeer/Oswald points out that assassinations don't change the world, the world goes back to normal and gets a new president. So why end with people wandering around acting like "something just broke" implying it can't be fixed? Yes, people all remember Kennedy just as people remember 9/11, Hiroshima, Princess Diana's death. That doesn't mean the world broke and can't go on. It's been going on through things just as bad and worse as that. It just seemed very self-indulgent and preening. I preferred it when the show was doing what it does throughout, which is just presenting these very different people who at their core want to be heard and noticed and remembered.
That idea is another reason why in a way I felt like John Hinkley was sort of...the ultimate model of the assassin, the most modern version as it were. He's a celebrity stalker, one of the first famous ones. Nowadays this kind of thing is so known, so it's interesting to think that John Wilkes Booth may have had a lot in common with this nerdy guy writing love songs to Jodie Foster. It got me thinking about fandom--of course--and how everybody has their different bad fandom behaviors that disturb them or they just take notice of. There are a lot of bad behaviors, obviously--anonymous hate-threads, imo, just appeal to that worst part of everyone that longs for the chance to bitch about somebody in public while the person can't do anything in return-they just have to sit there and take it. (It's kind of the opposite of Assassins-I want to watch you hurt while I'm invisible!) But for me I tend to pay more attention to that blurring of the lines between fantasy and reality that comes with the celebrities who are the lesser gods in any fandom (the fictional characters being the true gods and the creator, perhaps, being the King of the gods or whatever). A certain give and take between the real people involved in creating something and the fans is natural, I think. I also think it's natural for fans to feel a certain familiarity/affection/connection to the celebrities--so that, for instance, we refer to them by their first names.
But then there's this big grey area between that, and the normal interest in seeing people live or meeting them and the stalker who needs to be and be seen as someone on the other side of the line. I guess that's why the celebrities in a fandom always seem to me the most vulnerable, because I can so easily see how they could get hurt out of nowhere. Fen can be hurt too, of course, but fen, at least, are in the fandom by choice. Celebrities *aren't* in the fandom, yet part of them is. And what's creepy is not only do you not always know who's going to turn out to be the real psycho, but everyone knows so much about this kind of thing today that I think the correct language comes easily. So people feel like they can slip themselves over to the other side of the line by being the person telling other people they're wrong or creepy. After all, I think many celebrity stalkers consider themselves the protectors of their stars-that guy who murdered Rebecca Schaeffer did, for instance.
It's just as I said on F_W recently, all our interest in celebrities is pretty much selfish. You like looking at a picture at them so you cut one out of the magazine-that's self-centered. Not self-centered the way the word is usually used, to mean you're hurting the other person or ignoring their feelings or being a jerk. It's just something you do for yourself, not for them, even if they get advantages from being famous. I don't even know how this works in RPS. It's tempting to just say that blurs the line even further because you're writing fictional characters based on real people, but I don't think reading or writing RPS makes you automatically more crazy than any other fan. A true stalker might be the most vocal of the anti-RPS people, after all, speaking for the celebrity and saying he wouldn't like it and it's demeaning to use them that way.
I never got to see this show the first time around. It's a shame it seems to have had such a bumpy road-seemed like every time it was going to go up something would happen where people would get overly sensitive about the subject matter (presidential assassination). To me, though, this show just says so much about...well, I want to say America but I think it also says things about modern life. But those things are related because the cult of celebrity as it exists today seems to overlap with so many things people identify with the US.
I have had the CD from the original show for years so I know the songs, which are fascinating because Sondheim was experimenting with the music of different time periods. So the song about John Wilkes Booth is written in the style of Civil War-era American folk music, while the duet between John Hinkley and Squeaky Fromme is more in the style of a sappy 70s love song. I was unprepared for the great script though--there are some amazing monologues in it and the cast was uniformly excellent. Michael Cerveris was Booth, Neil Patrick Harris (You go, Dr. Doogie!!) was Oswald. Denis O'Hare was so wonderfully crazy and sweet and chilling as Charles Guiteau. Mario Cantone was also great as Samuel Byck who basically has two long monologues in the forms of tapes he's making for Leonard Bernstein and Dick Nixon.
I liked the way the Presidents came off, the way they were sort of affectionately all made fun of--or at least their popular persona in the public memory was. Byck has a great "argument" with Nixon where he imitates them and you remember how funny Nixon impressions are. I wondered if the Reagan attempted assassination would rub anyone the wrong way given his recent death but of course Reagan came off very well there--John Hinkley (Alexander Gemignani-who frightened me by walking up on stage and just looking so much like somebody who would be in a fandom I immediately liked him...) fires and fires where Reagan gets off quips on how pathetic he is. Ford comes in with a pratfall--which again reminds me of being a kid when Ford falling down was the joke you saw everywhere. He's sort of dopey but nice, helping his would-be assassins pick up their bullets.
The staging and lighting was really interesting--it's at Studio 54 and my friend and I got champagne to sip during the show. I love having the table in front of you-v. Civilized! I think I remember reading in the original show that when Oswald fired his shot the stage switched to a giant copy of that famous photo of Oswald himself being assassinated. In this version Oswald just turned around and stood still, and he was wearing a white tee-shirt upon which they projected a movie. You couldn't see very much of it, but of course the Zabruder film is so recognizable at this point you don't need to see much to recognize it. Nice effect, I thought.
The one thing I didn't much like was the added song, "Something Just Broke," where people sing about Kennedy's assassination. This bugged me because first, none of the other presidents got reaction songs-and yes, I realize that the Kennedy assassination was a "biggie," and the play basically has Booth and Oswald as the two major characters for that reason. But I think what bothered me is it just that...I understand that everyone remembers where they were when they heard Kennedy had been shot and those kinds of things are powerful. But, like, if somebody asks me where I was on 9/11 the point of the story is not how it affected ME but the fact that this incredible thing was happening to other people. It affected me personally to an extent, of course--especially since I live in Manhattan--but that's secondary and it's not why somebody would want to know about it, exactly. But this song, and the whole attitude it seems, was more in the direction of, "Let me examine every little thing for how I feel about it and how it affects me." It was the same thing that made Colonial House so annoying. Because of that I think I felt like the song was pushing for feeling when it fell flat. I much much prefer the original score that just went straight from the gunshot to the music to the final song.
The other reason I found this song rather jarring is that it rather undercut the idea of the rest of the show, I felt. Throughout the balladeer/Oswald pokes holes in the supposed motives for all these assassinations: doing it to unify a political party, to save the country, to give Charles Manson a platform, because your stomach hurt, to stand up for the working man, to prove yourself worthy of Jodie Foster...it's not the real reason. The real idea is that very modern one: by killing a famous person, one becomes important. That's why I thought showing all these people singing about how much they were changed by Oswald's action was a bad idea. It just seemed like indulging the very thing the assassins wanted that the play is exposing: look how important I am. Obviously they *did* have an effect, but earlier the balladeer/Oswald points out that assassinations don't change the world, the world goes back to normal and gets a new president. So why end with people wandering around acting like "something just broke" implying it can't be fixed? Yes, people all remember Kennedy just as people remember 9/11, Hiroshima, Princess Diana's death. That doesn't mean the world broke and can't go on. It's been going on through things just as bad and worse as that. It just seemed very self-indulgent and preening. I preferred it when the show was doing what it does throughout, which is just presenting these very different people who at their core want to be heard and noticed and remembered.
That idea is another reason why in a way I felt like John Hinkley was sort of...the ultimate model of the assassin, the most modern version as it were. He's a celebrity stalker, one of the first famous ones. Nowadays this kind of thing is so known, so it's interesting to think that John Wilkes Booth may have had a lot in common with this nerdy guy writing love songs to Jodie Foster. It got me thinking about fandom--of course--and how everybody has their different bad fandom behaviors that disturb them or they just take notice of. There are a lot of bad behaviors, obviously--anonymous hate-threads, imo, just appeal to that worst part of everyone that longs for the chance to bitch about somebody in public while the person can't do anything in return-they just have to sit there and take it. (It's kind of the opposite of Assassins-I want to watch you hurt while I'm invisible!) But for me I tend to pay more attention to that blurring of the lines between fantasy and reality that comes with the celebrities who are the lesser gods in any fandom (the fictional characters being the true gods and the creator, perhaps, being the King of the gods or whatever). A certain give and take between the real people involved in creating something and the fans is natural, I think. I also think it's natural for fans to feel a certain familiarity/affection/connection to the celebrities--so that, for instance, we refer to them by their first names.
But then there's this big grey area between that, and the normal interest in seeing people live or meeting them and the stalker who needs to be and be seen as someone on the other side of the line. I guess that's why the celebrities in a fandom always seem to me the most vulnerable, because I can so easily see how they could get hurt out of nowhere. Fen can be hurt too, of course, but fen, at least, are in the fandom by choice. Celebrities *aren't* in the fandom, yet part of them is. And what's creepy is not only do you not always know who's going to turn out to be the real psycho, but everyone knows so much about this kind of thing today that I think the correct language comes easily. So people feel like they can slip themselves over to the other side of the line by being the person telling other people they're wrong or creepy. After all, I think many celebrity stalkers consider themselves the protectors of their stars-that guy who murdered Rebecca Schaeffer did, for instance.
It's just as I said on F_W recently, all our interest in celebrities is pretty much selfish. You like looking at a picture at them so you cut one out of the magazine-that's self-centered. Not self-centered the way the word is usually used, to mean you're hurting the other person or ignoring their feelings or being a jerk. It's just something you do for yourself, not for them, even if they get advantages from being famous. I don't even know how this works in RPS. It's tempting to just say that blurs the line even further because you're writing fictional characters based on real people, but I don't think reading or writing RPS makes you automatically more crazy than any other fan. A true stalker might be the most vocal of the anti-RPS people, after all, speaking for the celebrity and saying he wouldn't like it and it's demeaning to use them that way.
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{{{{Charles Guiteau!!!}}}
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The one thing I'd wished for this production was that they'd had the guts and structure to stage it at the Booth, because nothing would make Wilkes burn more than haing a show with him as a character *staged* at the place named for his brother.
Back when it played in dc - maybe in 94? 95? the Post equated JWB's fame with modern times, saying, "It's as if Brad Pitt killed a president." I don't think we really realise that, these days.
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Oooh, you are so right. That really would be perfect.
Back when it played in dc - maybe in 94? 95? the Post equated JWB's fame with modern times, saying, "It's as if Brad Pitt killed a president." I don't think we really realise that, these days.
Heh! Or like one of the Baldwin brothers--like Billy rather than Alec. It's a strange concept.
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. But those things are related because the cult of celebrity as it exists today seems to overlap with so many things people identify with the US.
Haha, well this is true.
There is one thing I have to wonder though, reading your review of the show:
The other reason I found this song rather jarring is that it rather undercut the idea of the rest of the show, I felt. Throughout the balladeer/Oswald pokes holes in the supposed motives for all these assassinations: doing it to unify a political party, to save the country, to give Charles Manson a platform, because your stomach hurt, to stand up for the working man, to prove yourself worthy of Jodie Foster...it's not the real reason. The real idea is that very modern one: by killing a famous person, one becomes important. That's why I thought showing all these people singing about how much they were changed by Oswald's action was a bad idea. It just seemed like indulging the very thing the assassins wanted that the play is exposing: look how important I am.
Don't you think this was sort of the point of the added song? I mean, I obviously can't tell, not having seen the show, and I've never even heard the song in question, didn't know they had added one, actually. But I'm just thinking that it's not like Sondheim at all to "go for feeling" as you said, and if it was the point to sort of make everyone as self-absorbed as the Assasins, in that reaction song, it sort of seem to fit with the rest of the show. The show doesn't only seem to be about the Assasins want to be remembered, after all, it's about how the modern society seem to encourage that kind of need -the assasins are only the extreme consequences. For instance, one of my favourite songs: "How I saved Roosevelt", seem to be all about "how important I am".
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Yes, I think it's probably one of those shows that does have a lot of things it's assumed people know...I remember on NA recently a character said, "Sic semper tyrannis," and we were discussing the use of the quote and talking about JWB and several people asked who he was--there's no reason for the name, the story or that phrase to strike the same cord in people. (They could identify the phrase, just didn't relate it primarily to that incident.) And the show doesn't give detailed backgrounds of people, it just makes references to things that are meaningful because it's history. Much easier to go with a Sondheim show that isn't dealing with a lot of real people one might not know!
For instance, one of my favourite songs: "How I saved Roosevelt", seem to be all about "how important I am".
I love that song too--actually, I think that's another reason I didn't like the other one, that I felt like the Roosevelt song was more honest that way, showing the people grabbing their spotlight whereas the other ones were all weepy and being shocked. But you're right, I should probably try to see it in that context. The McKinley people are another great example, reeling off facts about the president and wanting to shake his hand.
I think the reason I was inclined to see it the first way is I heard it was added because people thought the ending was "too cold," and I didn't agree with that. I still like the original better where it ends with the shot, but who knows? Maybe in years to come people will need that song to show why JFK's assassination was so much more important than anyone else's. I probably just thought, um, it's a show that has somebody singing, "C'mere and shoot a president." It's supposed to be cold concerning that subject!