Assassins - I'm confused — Page 2

I think it's a very interesting moment, because it is the first time that the show's characters and focus move completely outhe realm of "history" and into (for most of the current Broadway-going public) still-recent events. Chances are, no one has any genuine emotions about the assassination of Lincoln- for as long as anyone has been alive, Lincoln has been dead, shot by John Wilkes Booth. Similarly, the failed assassins are just that- failures. They left no mark on history, and thus have no enormous cultural resonances.

When we hear the assassins' Pippin-esque promises of "You can close the Stock Exchange," on one level we know they are right. But on another level, we know that most of them have been shown to be self-deluded individuals, not exactly paragons of perception or even of sanity. When they push Lee to fire that fatal shot, and the show goes just to "Everybody's Got The Right," it is, as someone said below, just another "I am, I did" moment. But when it is preceded by "Something Just Broke," we are forced to confront not only our memories of the Kennedy assassination and its aftermath, but the realization that the assassins were RIGHT- shooting the president DOES have enormous aftershock on the rest of the nation, something that is not addressed or discussed for the entirety of the show, save there.

All of a sudden, the focus shifts- the show is no longer about the assassins, our villain protagonists. All at once we see that it is the country itself who is the main character in the work. The arguments that it was a commercial move, and pandering to the need to "mourn after 9-11" have good points to make, but the difference in the public opinion and feelings on the Kennedy assassination versus the Lincoln, etc. are rather like the feelings on 9-11 versus Pearl Harbor for the majority of Americans, and I think Sondheim must have realized that.

I get what you're saying, that the number seems to change the intent of the show to ask "were these men victims of Americanism through the ages, not villains?"

That said, I think it's intentional. The show sets up that moral ambiguity so that after Kennedy is shot, it can skewer it completely and shoot it all to hell. Instead of the final "Everybody's Got The Right" being the final question of "were they really as bad as history paints them, or did they have good reason for what they did," the number is much more darkly ironic than it was even at the beginning, now that we have seen outside the minds of the Assassins for the first time.

Why the song works so well and is so important is that throughout the show, nobody in the audience has any personal connection with any of the assassinations. They're stories from a book or on the History Channel. When Kennedy is killed though, people watching either remember that moment vividly or have heard from their parents about where they were when it happened and the impact is well documented. The song serves to put everything we have just seen into perspective and when the words "The President is dead" are spoken, the entire point of the show is clear.

Oh, in a hundred years (even 50 years) the ending won't have the impact it has now. Part of me wants to call it a flaw but I can't see doing that because there's always references to current events in theater/film etc. that are going to resonate more with audiences closer to the events they're talking about. But what I think won't change is that it will put the entire show in perspective about how an act like that changes the world and changes peoples lives. The weight of it all.

I also agree that it doesn't exactly "fit" with the rest of the score but in this circumstance I think that's exactly what it DOES "fit". If that makes any sense at all.

Eric, you're right to stick to your original opinion. The inclusion of the song is not what holds ASSASSINS together; all it does is tell us something we already know and feel. It takes something that we should be intelligent enough to know, that Sondheim should trust us enough to know, and puts it on stage for what seems an eternity. We know this kind of event changes peoples lives. We know it has a human effect. We would have to be blind not to recognise that, because this KIND of event happens all the time. What was brilliant about ASSASSINS before "Something Just Broke" went in was that the dialogue that builds up to the gunshot and the music that erupted after communicates EVERYTHING that "Something Just Broke" does without spelling it out for us like we're a bunch of second graders. And then with that immediate feeling that's been put into your gut, so intense because it hasn't been made completely flaccid by Sondheim's equivalent of "Music of the Night" (harsh and hyperbolic, I know), it segues into a final "Everybody's Got the Right", which can fully embrace its horror and irony.

Your devil's advocate argument is on the mark: in 100 years, the song might as well be cut again. Actually, it might as well be cut now, because unless we in the audience are as psychopathic as the assassins themselves, it isn't something we need spelled out for us in four minutes of stage time in the first place. (It was all there already cf. the paragraph above.) All it does is, as you say, 'make it a much more comfortable show in that we leave the theatre with the firm idea that the assassins are to blame, are villains, and are outsiders'. Other arguments make sense and, I agree, some fair points have been raised in defence of the song, as is always the case, but as you implied earlier, these are perspectives that make the song work in spite of itself.

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Well said--I think you basically said some of what I was trying to say in a much more coherent fashion. I do think it takes the piece, as you say, in such a literal direction that isn't just unnecessary but takes the audience out of the show.

I think the song "Something Just Broke" is an okay song. It's not a Sondheim masterpiece, it doesn't stick with me. But the reason I enjoy its placement in the show is a literary one. It's a Miltonian reversal.

Look at Milton's "Paradise Lost." The whole epic sets up Satan as a noble antihero, one that audiences start to root for and sympathize with for thinking outside the box and standing up to his convictions. But by the end, that subversion has been itself subverted. We realize that we have been misled and manipulated by the poem- much like a sinner would be misled and misrepresented by Satan.

The original "Assassins" was very much like the first part of "Paradise Lost." Its postmodern, post-Vietnam critique of Americanism and the American Dream left the question open- is it really okay to shoot the President? If so, when? Are these people really the heartless villains they have been portrayed as, or did they have reasons that can be understood and justified for trying to commit the ultimate American crime?

The revised "Assassins," by including just the one extra song and scene, creates the Miltonian reversal. Up until Lee Harvey Oswald shoots the gun, we have seen the show from the eyes of the Assassins themselves. Any glimpses we've seen of the American public have been as boorish, unpleasant and highly caricatured figures, especially in "How I Saved Roosevelt," making the Assassins more relatable and sympathetic than the public. But once "Something Just Broke" begins, it is as if the stage has revolved to reveal what has been behind the scenes the whole time- America, not as the Assassins see it, but as it sees itself. Suddenly, the sympathy, understanding and "rooting" we may have felt for the Assassins so far drops away. If done correctly, this should be an instant guilt trip- we have been entertained to the point of condoning moral relativism to an absurd degree, and suddenly that comfort is shaken away from us. If the original production said "Maybe shooting the president is not ALWAYS the worst possible thing that could be done, given the America we lived- and currently live- in," the revival says "Yes it is, and look how easily you can be led to believe otherwise with just a little persuasion!"

After reading over this argument, I sort of wonder if the moment would work better, or be less "controversial" to its detractors, if instead of being the penultimate scene, "Something Just Broke" was after the final "Everybody's Got The Right," or woven together so the two sentiments stand as one while contradicting each other.

I'm on the pro-Something Just Broke team by a mile. After 2 hours of Brechtian distancing onstage, this was the passage that for me allowed true empathetic feeling to flood from the stage into the house. There was another magical aspect to this song-- it's not just about the Kennedy assassination, but rather about ALL those different decades in which assassinations took place coexisting in perfect harmony. Check the costumes worn by the ensemble and check a few of the lyrics--

"I was out in the yard
Taking down the bed sheets...

I was getting me a shoeshine...

We were waiting for a carriage...

I was up near the ridge plowing
We were working at the plant
I was halfway through correcting the exams...

Mr. Garfield
Mr Lincoln
He’s a hack
Bill McKinley
He’s a giant
He’s a joke
Still, something just broke...

I was down at the Exchange...

I’d been shopping...

I’m taking the order...

It was seeing all those torches
Bringing us all together..."

Giving the audience one blissful moment when the chorus (the country) can actually come together in perfect harmony makes all that came before it worth the horror.

I've been involved in enough Assassins productions (all that used SJB) that I'd like to think that, while in repsect to performance and orchestrations I prefer the original Off Broadway cast album by a mile, my judgement isn't based on just being more used to the original. (I think no modern production of Into the Woods should leave out Our Little World, to use a poor comparison--and love Ah But Underneath at least as much as Lucy and Jesse, something some Follies fans will tar and feather me for.)

"Giving the audience one blissful moment when the chorus (the country) can actually come together in perfect harmony makes all that came before it worth the horror. "

I think that's more than fair. For me *personally* this is one of the major reasons the song does not work in the show. I think in one fell swoop it leaks away much of the power of the piece, and thematically is outside the scope of the piece. It could work in an interesting second act that flipss the view of the piece (though again I think that might negate the power of Assassins).

Now, Eric, surely you knew I wasn't referring to you personally! You (and others) have quite ably supported your points of view here.

As for me, I've seen the show with and without "Something Broke" and I like it either way. But I must admit that having taught the published script for years and played the off-Bway OC album, THAT's the version of ASSASSINS that comes to mind when I think of the show.

Perhaps I'm a little late to the Caroline discussion, but that it didn't get at least four Tonys and a Pulitzer is a travesty. And I love Avenue Q, but still. 100% with Jordan on this one.

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I'm a huge Neil Patrick Harris fan, but the fact is the Balladeer was written (or later adapted) for Patrick Cassidy's very specific high tenor. Nobody sings it quite like him.

(I saw Cassidy do a staged reading of the show a few years ago. The top notes aren't quite there, but the unique way the range of those songs sit on his voice is still apparent. And Annie Golden still makes a marvelous Fromme!)