The Chichester Festival Theatre production of Stephen Sondheim’s 1990 musical is apparently the first professional staging of the show since the composer’s death and is mounted just as American candidates are announcing their intention to run for President in 2024. Director Polly Findlay and designer Lizzie Clachan draw on this, setting in their restaging at a 2023 National Convention rally and in the White House Oval Office. The Trump like arrival of the Proprietor (Peter Forbes) and the large screens of 24-hour news coverage from CNN and Fox makes a very obvious parallel to the historical stories. However, something is lost in the modern, large-scale, I would say, overblown, approach compared to the joyous intimacy of my previous two viewings of this title at the 200-seat Watermill in Newbury and a 50-seat studio amateur version. The intimacy of those settings and staging as intended as a 20th-century showman’s fairground attraction is completely lost on this grand scale and too often lonely 1 or 2 figures centre stage fail to have the same impact on us.
The fact that we know, either from history or the programme, each of the nine would-be presidential assassins and the outcome of their attempts and that they are all unsympathetic characters with apparently fairly bizarre motivations for their actions means there is little drama or engagement in the story, so we are left plenty of time to reflect on the staging and listen to Sondheim’s unique musical style. Judging by the half-empty Chichester Theatre many of the regulars have already prejudged the show and know that the style is something of an acquired taste. I doubt many visitors to this show will change their views of the music after a very long one hundred- and five-minute (without an interval) version.
We meet eight would-be assassins in the opening number “Everybody has got the right” as the Trump-like proprietor invites each character to collect a weapo. Naturally enough we first meet John Wilkes Booth (played with a magnificent moustache by Danny Mac) who killed Abe Lincoln at the Ford Theatre in Washington in 1861 and at least appeared to have a vehement reason for his action. Then the 1933 attempt on Roosevelt by Guiseppe Zangara (Luke Brady) with its chilling electrocution scene and the 1901 assassination of McKinley by Leon Czolgosz (Sam Oladeinde).The back stories of the four would-be assassins follow. The 1975 failed attempts on Gerald Ford by Lynette Frome (Carly Mercedes Dyer) and Sarah Jane Moore (Amy Booth-Steel), the demented Santa Claus Samuel Byck (Nick Holder) who threatened Nixon in 1974 and the deluded John Hinckley (Jack Swallow) whose attempt on Reagan in 1981 seemed designed to impress the actress, Jodie Foster. By the time Charles Guiteau (Harry Hepple) is hung for the murder of Garfield in 1881 in a gruesome song and dance up the gallows step it is all starting to feel a bit tedious.
The arrival of the most famous assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald (Samuel Thomas) whose infamous assassination of Kennedy in 1963 finally lifts the show as the eight others urge him to perform the deed with the seemingly flimsy rationale of creating a lasting legacy of fame for himself and themselves. The song “November 22, 1963” is the best moment in the show although the “will he, won’t he” moment is rather lost by our familiarity with the black and white footage of the actual event that we have seen so often before.It is framed as a musical revue, but the comedic elements seem suppressed in this staging and the formidable talents of Carly Mercedes Dyer and Lizzie Connelly are rather wasted in their roles. The quotation from Death of a Salesman that “attention must be paid" as a justification for their actions is rather overwhelming by the overproduced staging. This is a musical that would have been better in the Minerva Theatre where we could “pay attention” to the madness in their eyes and the music rather than the multimedia razzamatazz of the modern setting.
As we watch the 2023/24 US Presidential election process you feel the candidates are more likely to die of old age or an unfortunate fall but perhaps given the horrific gun culture of the USA, this staging may prove to be prescient of something to come with a 14th assassination attempt. We will have to wait and see but in the meantime, this production is one for hardcore Sondheim fans and not for those new to his work. For those, I recommend they start with Into the Woods or Sweeney Todd where there is real drama, witty storytelling and much better tunes and leave this one for the hardcore fans.Review by Nick Wayne
Rating: ★★
Seat: Stalls, Row O | Price of Ticket: £70
