Assassins — Page 2

I wouldn't necessarily agree that the men are superior to the females...
I think that Booth and Czogolz are given strong bases (by that I mean that they thought they were doing good for their own people -others did too yes-but anyway--Booth acted for the South and the Confederate states --he says "What I did was kill the man who killed my country", he felt Lincoln was responsible for the deaths of all of the Americans -confederate or no- during the civil war, Czolgolz feld that he was serving as a voice of the working class and blamed "the man" basically, for the unfairness of the system -capitalism we love you- I think these are more "understandable" than some of the other assassin's reasonings).
Whereas some of the other characters in a modern eye seem to be a little more nuts than the others. Not to say that Booth and Czolgolz weren't a little off their block, hell, Booth was an actor! ("They say you killed a country John because of bad reviews") Zangara couldn't stand the pains in his stomach, so he eventually blamed the president, Guiteau wanted to promote a book and be ambassador to France, Hinckley wanted to impress Jodie Foster...the motives start to be a little less reasonable("understood" again) by all...know what I mean?
Fromme wanted to kill someone to allow Charlie Manson to be heard in court, crazy? stupid? (She did think he was the son of god) Take your pick, but her goal worked. I don't think you could say her devotion to Charlie was unpassionate, or that her and Charlie's views weren't visionary (weird and unpopular maybe). You can't say she didn't reflect the same devotion that Booth or Czolgolz demonstrated.

However, Sara Moore is painted somewhat less for us all in the show. She really serves as the comic relief in the piece. I don't think it's a woman thing, I just think her character is the popular in the public eye. I mean who has even heard of her? I think John Weidman used her in a role to help the script stay out of the dark fro the whole time. Her assassination attempt came only like two weeks following Fromme's attempt, so I am sure that it was swallowed a bit by her. AND, if you think about it, the characters that are the most developed of the men, are those that were SUCCESSFUL in their attempts (Garifield, McKinley, Lincoln, Kennedy), so it makes sense that we know more about them historically. Maybe Moore was that lackadaisical about the whole thing? Don't know.

Point is I don't see seperation of the sexes in that way, Zangara is sort of a weak build, and you can't really say that that is Oswald's story is about him anyways, it's really about the psyche of a man at a crossroad.

ENOUGH ALREADY! Bleh...sorry for all that.

I haven't seen it yet...but am going soon.

Fascinating point about the men/women thing...but I actually think it's more of a shift in consciouness throughout the century + that's covered in the show. Notice how the assassins (with the exception of Guiteau) murdered out of some sort of sense of justice and the assassins in the later part of the 20th Century murdered (or attempted to) out of a selfish desire to be heard. I think it nicely charts the internalization of the American psyche (I totally just made that up).

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I don't think this score is weak at all. There are a lot of the fine lyrics you expect of Sondheim and the music is perhaps the "catchiest" he has ever written. I think it's in the score that the show get under your skin. It's when the assassins sing that you "get inside their heads" and I think Sondheim pulls off as many chills in those moments as he does in SWEENEY TODD.

i know it wasnt made up, but they down played the 'i could impress manson' notion and played up the 'charlie says' ...

notice i dont think the men in the show affected by a crush/love were following, because the idea itself was their own. sure you could argue that booth shows up swaying the characters but in those scenes i saw him more as an inner voice.

yeah she said it, but i didnt really 'get' that. i think her motive was the least developed. and as already stated she was pretty much there for comic relief.

Yes, as suggested - these are previews and even though this is not a new show, it is being worked on and there are changes, past present and future.

It will be frozen on Thursday April 15th.

Other than that - no comment.

that just means theyll stop being able to change things on april 15th.

I saw the matinee today, and really enjoyed the show. It was very funny, and I thought the females were the best because they were so funny.

The discussion was fantastic. Denis, Michael, and BAB spoke. The highlight was one man in the audience who asked something to the effect of:

"Do you think it is okay to trivialize murder, and present these assassinations in such a light way (glorifying the acts in a way)?"

To which Denis replied: "Is that what the rest of you think the show is doing?"

To which 95% of the remaining people in the theatre replied "NO!!!".

It was fantastic.

I saw it. I liked it a lot. I thought the production was admirable, the direction was first rate (I forgive Joe Mantello for Wicked now), and the acting and singing excellent. The show bogged down a bit during some of the dialogue scenes. It is unfortunate that Weidman's average to good book can't compete with Sondheim's excellent to brilliant songs. But it does finally come together into a piece of intelligent, funny, heartbreaking theatre. I can heartily recommend it to anyone willing to watch a show that has something more serious on it's mind than deciding which song from Abba's catalogue to trot out next.

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I was disappointed with the recording of the Playwrights' production, and unlike any other SS show (besides PACIFIC OVERTURES) the CD gathered dust for a decade. But I found the score in the theater to be mostly enthralling, among the most melodic of Sondhiem's work (as someone noted) -- and this production a very persuasive case for the show. It seemed far more accessible than the recording suggested, and for my money, the Wiedman book is very underrated. It does far more than stitch together SS's stunning sequences; it's economically crafted, a compelling framework for mixing and matching these people who actually never met, finding numerous flavors of thematic counterpoint. Because SS uses sometimes poetic/esoteric words to express the unspeakble feelings of the characters, many book scenes kept us connected to the pedestrian lives lead by these mostly poignantly ordinary miscreants. Wiedman wisely found much black humor -- though it's never cheap or exploitive. Just when it veers close to sitcom (the KFC sequence, which is truly funny), we get a moving moment of another emotional color (the Emma Goldman encounter -- a beautifully written exchange).

This is a predictable observation: So many shows are called "ambitious," but this one truly is. (SPOILER:) The people around me at the Sunday matinee began to weep as the Zapruder footage was projected onto Harris's Oswald. Their reaction made me react. All of a sudden, I remember being in 7th grade when JFK was shot. A show that began as a chilly Brechtian intellectual experience became a deeply emotional one in the final moments.

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Updated On: 4/19/04 at 10:54 AM

The talk backs are every couple of weeks sort of sparratically. The next one is this Sunday. With about 6 or 7 cast members.

I actually find it unconscionable that the Zapruder footage - probably the most disturbing film ever made- is used in this production.

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Updated On: 4/29/04 at 07:23 AM