Interesting. I admit I am sort of envious of you for having had the opportunity to see this show. I have the original on CD as well, because I used to be a big Sondheim-fan (well, maybe I still am ;-)), but the chances of it ever being up in Sweden are miniscular, IMO, because the subject -assasins of American presidents- is too foreign. We might know more about America than of most other countries, but the specific knowledge that show requires from its audience... nah, it'd never work. (Not to mention the fact that Sondheim is quite a bit too unconventional to be up much anyway.)
. 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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Date: 2004-06-19 07:17 am (UTC). 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".