One
of the unwritten rules of standard theatre practice used to be, "Don't
point a gun onstage at the audience". Stephen Sondheim and John Weidman's "Assassins" breaks that taboo with a vengeance.
American fascination with guns and violence is an overdone plaint of social
critics. Few artists have undertaken to point out the consequences. This show,
like Sondheim and Weidman's other collaboration, "Pacific Overtures",
was before its time. The success of recent revivals of each in NYC suggests
that some part of the audience has caught up with them. The urge to kill and
obsession with celebrity are additional flaws explored in this abstract music
theatre piece, the second presentation this season by the new Metro Stage
Company.
The
first presidential assassin was of course John Wilkes Booth, the younger son of
mad Junius Brutus Booth, a transplanted British Shakespearean, whose older son
Edwin left his mark on the American stage's concept of "Hamlet:" well
into the 20th century. A much less successful actor, Wilkes, as he was known,
became a rabid supporter of the Southern cause, and in current parlance, joined
terrorists ready to support its ends by any means. Boston Conservatory MFA Robert
Case gave a
solid performance in the role with a believable south'rn accent. Two lesser
known but almost as decisive assassins of American presidents were Charles
Giteau, a "go-getter" with delusions of grandeur usually
characterized as a failed office seeker, and radical Polish workingman Leon
Czolgosz. The former, who killed Garfield, was brightly played by peripetatic Bob
DeVivo. Czolgosz
(pronounced Chole-gosh), who killed McKinley making T.R. President, was done
with looming intensity by James Tallach, a Turtle Lane stalwart last seen there as the
Engineer in "Ms. Saigon". All three brought experience and authority
to their roles, in this solid production thoughtfully staged by director Janet
Neely
Five
failed assassins play out their obsessions as well. Corey Jackson was dyspeptic Guiseppe Zangara
who got the chair for shooting at F. D. R., Chris Moleski did schizophrenic Samuel Byck
who planned to crash into the Nixon White House. Erin Tchoukeff and Jaclyn Campbell played Lynette
"Squeaky" Fromme and Sara Jane Moore, Charles Manson's two followers
who shot at Gerald Ford. And John Dupuis was a sad-sack John Hinckley who almost got
Reagan, trying to impress Jody Foster. The almost casual madness displayed by
all five is one of the downsides of freedom. The last assassin, of course, was
Lee Harvey Oswald effectively underplayed by David Janett, egged on by Case as Booth.
Sondheim and Weidman suggest that the idea of assassination as form of personal
political expression is too deeply rooted in the American psyche.
The
Proprietor of the supposed shooting gallery where the action occurs was Ari
Vigoda. He
supplied the guns and stood in for minor characters from time to time. The
BalladSinger, played by tenor Daniel Sharrocks, provided musical background for
Booth and Czolgosz. Both parts are well cast, though their part in the action
is one of the weaknesses in the book. The Ensemble, who added a nice texture to
the show included Deb Poppel, with nice cameo as Emma Goldman opposite Czolgosz, and Kristen
Huberdeau, Will
Morningstar, and
Natasha Warloe.
Musically, the production gots firm support from Michael Kreutz at one of the keyboards
conducting a six piece ensemble. Acoustically balance was only occasionally a
problem in Durrell hall, which has no pit; the band was on the house floor
stage right. Recently renovated, the sweep of Durrell's horseshoe balcony added
to the historic feel for this production. The set, designed Case, would be more
impressive if fully realized. IRNE winner John MacKenzie's lighting reflected years of
experience under difficult conditions. Metro's resources are limited despite a
lot of volunteer support. There's room for improvement. In this case, the
material and the experienced cast carried the show which deserved a longer run.
The
second local revival under consideration, "Violet", has been quietly drifting
about the country since it won Drama Critics Circle Award (1998), the first
Off-Broadway musical ever to do so. There's recently been more interest in Jeanine
Tesori's work
since her collaboration on "Caroline, or: Change" with Tony Kushner.
The book was adapted by Brian Crawley, who also provided the lyrics, from a successful T.V.
movie based on Doris Betts' Southern Gothic romance, "The Ugliest
Pilgrim". With a company of at least 18 depending on doubling of minor
roles, this show falls somewhere between a chamber music drama and a large
scale musical. A production could go either way; this current one falls somewhere
in between, and is most successful in its intimate moments.
The
title role was sung by Kristin Shoop, seen as Evelyn Nesbit in last season's
"Ragtime", which won director Bill Doscher an IRNE. Going with the
abstraction of a show which takes place on a bus ride from rural North Carolina
to Tulsa, Oklahoma, Violet's scar, the result of an accident at age 10, had to
be imagined, along with much of the setting. The first person onstage indeed is
Violet's pre-accident ten year old self, played with charm by Talene Monahan, whose folky opening number,
took careful attention to make out the words. Older Violet stood in the
background waiting for a bus, in front of a sepia photo of an old Greyhound.
Young Vi's father played by Steven Littlehale calls her away and the ensemble
sets up the bus using backed benches which later double as seating in the
reststop cafe or pews at the televised revival Violet's journeying to. Katherine
Hetmansky's
multi-purpose set using a variety of photo backdrops had some interesting
configurations, but was a trifle fussy involving a lot of massive scene
shifting, putting Doscher's traffic management skills to the test. A simpler
approach might have been better.
The
cast was a mixture of Footlight veterans and area talent. The two soldiers
Violet falls in with on her trip were Flick, played by Guyana-born Samuel
Martinborough
and Monty, played by peripetatic local Jason Beals. Martinborough works extensively
with young vocalists from Boston urban neighborhoods. Violet has a brief fling
with Monty, a Vietnam-bound corporal, but is drawn to Flick, a black career
sergeant. The two other men in her life are her deceased father seen in
flashbacks recounting the accident and her unhappy life after, and Ian Flynn's Preacher, a televangelist
healer who she believes can clear her scarred face. Flynn was Houdini in
:Ragtime." When she comes to terms the disappointment both inflict, there
may be a future for this bird of passage. Even a chancy one with Flick.
Several
singers with special numbers stood out during the show, Dee Crawford, a Gospel singer heard in
"Ragtime" and in shows for the Company Theatre and Fiddlehead,
brought a big sound to the revival sequence. Cara Babich as the Music Hall Singer and Katie
Picket as the
Hotel Lounge Singer added interest to Violet's introduction to big-city night
life in the company of her two soldiers. Most of shows numbers involve the
three travelers. The number closest to musical comedy is a quintet, "The
Luck of the Draw", which involves Violet beating the two Army men at poker
while her father teachers young Vi to play downstage. The country music sources
for many of the show's songs support the characterizations and the whole show
is quite poignant. Markus Hauck, currently getting a Masters at Boscon, gets a nice
sound out of his ensemble, though the drum kit is predictably too prominent at
times, making it hard to hear words clearly. This show would benefit from
discrete sound reinforcement, since there's a lot of interesting material in
Crawley's lyrics, and Footlight's historical hall is acoustically primitive.
Like "Assassins", its brief run wasn't enough to develop its
potential.
Of
course, the Boston's area's premiere producers of concert versions of early
shows from the American musical Theatre, American Classics, only do two
performances of their revivals. This spring, they brought back enough numbers
from the four years of Irving Berlin's Music Box Revues (1921 - 24) to give a good idea of what these
shows which depended of wit and charm more than spectacle might have been like.
About half the numbers were taken from the first edition, starting with
"Eight Little Notes"--the first revue only used eight girls in the
chorus. There was also complex number "Dining Out", a full cast
number that evolves from a romantic duo "In a Cozy Kitchenette", a
Fanny Brice style parody, "I'm a Dumbbell" for a soubrette, in this
case Rachel Smith,
and of course, what became the Music Box's theme song, "Say it with
Music", sung in its original duet form by La'Tarsha Long and Eric Bronner. The end of show featured
"An Interview", where the eight chorines "interview" the
author himself, which showcases excerpts for familiar tunes like
"Alexander's Ragtime Band" and would also allow previews of new
songs. American Classics' co-founder Benjamin Sears played the interviewee. The
"Finale Ultimo" immediately following then reprised various tunes
from the show, some against one another.
The
most ambitious piece was "A Bit o' Grand Opera" (1923), a sextet
reconstructed by one of American Classics' founders, Bradford Conner. The sole
text was the chorus from "Yes We Have No Bananas", with music lifted
from Aida, La Boheme, and Lohengrin, and that's not the half of it. It was of
course sung with precision by Joie Marshall Perry, Valerie Anastasio, Mary Ann Lanier, Bronner, Conner, and Sears.
Lanier, another co-founder, also got to sing a classic from the Berlin
songbook, "What'll I Do?" (1924). Bronner did "All Alone (By the
Telephone)" (1923-24) with Jean Danton . He did "Dining Out"
with Rebecca Lawless. The tallest of the Eight Litttle Notes, Heather Peterson got to do "I'm Looking for
a Daddy Long-legs", a speciality written for Charlotte Greenwood. Peter
Miller got to work with all of them in the 1923 number written for the eight
"Climbing up the scale.
Revues
weren't all music, so the company brought back Benchley's "Treasurer's
Report", originally performed by the author, here by Bob Jolly , who directed all the sketches.
Jolly also got to sing the G&S inspired "Take a Little Wife"
(1922), an appropriate number for Boston's leading patter man. His squad also
did Kaufman's perennial "If Men Played Cards as Women Do", and
several burlesque style sketches which employed comedienneJoAnn Dickinson in various roles. A new comer to
AC and Boston, she'll be a musical asset to future productions as well. And
through it all, music director and co-founder Margaret Ulmer worked her usual magic on the
Steinway. It should also be noted that in April N.E. Light Opera did a concert
production of Romberg's "The New Moon" presented at the Tsai Center
over at B.U., the Boston Conservatory revived Jerome Kern's "Roberta"
(1933)--the show that made Bob Hope a Broadway star--and the HRG&S Society
had a go at "Princess Ida" in the classic Radcliffe Theatre. Music
Theatre fans had a chance to see a wide range works this past month, done with
skill and love for the form. Those would need pop-culture nostalgia even got to
see a community theatre production of "Schoolhouse Rock."