Dark comedy takes aim
Musical explores nine assailants of American presidents
DANGEROUS—Sara Jane Moore (Julie Bermel) meets Lynette“Squeaky”Fromme (Randi Saxer) in this dark comedy about presidential assailants. “Assassins” plays through Nov. 4 at Camarillo Skyway Playhouse. Courtesy Barbara MazeikaJohn Wilkes Booth to Lee Harvey Oswald:
“Move your little finger and you can change
the world.” That sentence sums up Stephen
Sondheim’s “Assassins,” a sneeringly cynical
musical that groups nine historical
presidential assailants in a “Twilight Zone”-like
revue of comic malevolence.
Not only is it one of the more difficult
Broadway shows to perform, its dark premise is revulsive to many theatergoers.
Originally staged off-Broadway in 1990, “Assassins” closed after only 73 performances.
Two years later, a London production fared no better.
When “Assassins” finally reached Broadway in 2004, it won five Tony awards, including
Best Revival of a Musical.
Camarillo Skyway Playhouse producer Dean Johnson and director Brian Robert Harris
deserve double points not only for attempting to stage the show but for doing so right
before Election Day.
“Assassins” memorably traverses time and space, with historical criminals interacting with
one another. Where else can Charles Guiteau, who shot President James Garfield in
1881, clumsily seduce Sara Jane Moore, who took a potshot at Gerald Ford
nearly a century later? The bizarre confluence of the deluded assailants
and their perverted rationales is tied together in the setting of a shooting gallery,
run by a gruesomely jovial carnival barker played by Louis Graham.
Familiar patriotic numbers such as “Hail to the Chief” and Sousa’s “El Capitan” march
are stretched and distorted to reflect the twisted perversion of the characters’
polluted patriotism.Sondheim’s score is deliberately dissonant, with the singers’
parts often sonically at odds with Susan Calkins’ three-piece orchestra.
Sondheim customized the songs to the eras in which each assassin lived, “The Ballad
of Booth” sounding like a Stephen Foster banjo ditty and the love song John
Hinckley composes for Jodie Foster deliberately amateurish.
The Camarillo cast labored for four months on the difficult songs, and although much
of the singing is shaky at times, the acting is universally excellent, with several
performances standing out. Jim Seerden is shattering as Samuel Byck,
who was foiled in a 1974 attempt on the life of Richard Nixon. A raving lunatic in
a Santa Claus suit, Byck rants to conductor Leonard Bernstein through a
hand-held tape recorder and then to Nixon himself.
Randi Saxer plays Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme, one of the lesser-known acolytes of
mass murder mastermind Charles Manson until she took a shot at Gerald Ford in
1975. A beguiling actress much more attractive than the plain would-be murderess
she is portraying, Saxer is chilling in a particularly bloodthirsty performance. Her
duet with Eric Umali as Hinckley in “Unworthy of Your Love” is the musical highlight
of the show. Alex Choate plays John Wilkes Booth with self-pitying nobility.
The scene in which he and the other assassins persuade a suicidal Oswald (Andy Justus)
to shoot down John F. Kennedy is superbly disquieting.
In this circus full of triggerh appy fruit- cakes, Julie Bermel’s Sara Jane Moore is
the nuttiest of all. A foppish five- time divorcee, Moore missed Ford only because
her gun was misaligned. Bermel’s whacked-out scene with Saxer’s Squeaky is
horrifically funny as they joust about their respective obsessions.
Kyle Johnson as anarchist Leon Czolgosz ( President McKinley’s assassin),
Evan Boelsen as Guiteau and Luis Soto’s anguished FDR sniper Giuseppe Zangara
are equally creepy and effective. Kellie Holm ties everything together as The Balladeer,
who acts as the Greek chorus of the show.
Due to the unsettling subject matter, gunfire and frequent profanity, “Assassins” is definitely not for
children. But if you appreciate imaginative black comedy, you’ll have a blast.
“Assassins” plays through Nov. 4. For tickets, call (805) 388-5716 or go online to
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