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.
