Review: ASSASSINS, Chichester Festival Theatre
Photo credit: Johan Persson
Chichester Festival Theatre has a celebrated history of spectacular musical revivals that have gone on to storm the West End – including The Pajama Game, Guys and Dolls, and Gypsy. Polly Findlay’s current production of Stephen Sondheim’s dark musical comedy Assassins will surely join the ranks of these celebrated productions and enjoy the widest audience possible.
Perhaps Sondheim’s most savagely satirical work, Assassins tells the story of America’s most infamous presidential assassins, as well as a number of less successful but nonetheless notorious attempted assassins. In recounting the stories of this gaggle of disillusioned dreamers, political disruptors and isolated outsiders, Sondheim and librettist John Weidman hold to account the American mythology of the self-made man, the entitlement to hope, glory and the ‘American dream’ – as summarised in the opening number ‘everybody’s got the right’.
Findlay’s production brings this 90s script into the present day, with Lizzie Clachan’s dazzling design transforming the Festival Theatre auditorium into a United States political convention. There are discomforting nods to Donald Trump’s presidency with the front of house staff and band donning red baseball caps – a chilling shorthand for far-right fanaticism.
Findlay’s vision is inspired and rigorously executed. With video design by Akhila Krishnan and the role of the Balladeer divided between three political pundits, the action on stage unfolds like a commercial news broadcast – emphasising the increasing overlap between politics, news and entertainment.
Not to be outdone by the star-spangled stage design, the cast prove themselves stellar across the board. Danny Mac oozes charisma as the leader of the assassins, John Wilkes Booth. Harry Hepple also stands out as a sparky and camp Charles Guiteau, performing his jolly insanity with a perfect comic touch.
Carly Mercedes Dyer and Jack Shalloo bring the house down with their hilarious, fake-out love duet, as they battle each other to prove their respective obsessive devotion to Charles Manson and Jodie Foster, accompanied by lighting, sound and music that served ‘high school prom’.
Nick Holder, on the other hand, is positively chilling as attempted assassin Sam Byck. There is something so innately horrific about a bedraggled man donning a filthy, blood-spattered Father Christmas outfit, and Holder holds the audience rapt as a man on the edge of his sanity.
This production is appropriately bloodless for a show that treats death coldly, and like a transaction – a pull of a trigger for a lifetime of notoriety. The comedy of this production is disarming, with uproarious laughter quickly descending into bated breath when the cast turn their guns upon the audience.
Faultlessly performed, this is a sparky, tense and utterly absorbing show. Rich with eloquent debate and set to a typical sublime Sondheim score, you’d be hard-pressed to find a better musical on stage in the UK right now. Truly unmissable.
***** Five stars
Reviewed by: Livvy Perrett
Assassins plays at Chichester Festival Theatre until 24 June, with further information here.