Nine 'Assassins' share motives in FWA musical

Sarah Rebell Staff Writer

The Future Waitstaff of America explores nine dark hearts in “Assassins,” Stephen Sondheim’s unsettling dream of a vaudeville.

The musical is a bleak yet comedic examination of the nine men and women who attempted to—and in four cases, actually did—assassinate the President of the United States. Known to most students as notorious characters in history textbooks, John Wilkes Booth, Lee Harvey Oswald, Charles Guiteau and John Hinckley Jr., among others, come to life in FWA’s unconventional production.

In his study of the motives behind their actions, Sondheim backdrops these profoundly unsympathetic characters against the underside of the American dream. The material breaks the characters free of their respective time periods, and they communicate with each other through song and common demented aspirations. The Balladeer, the show’s pseudo-Greek chorus, connects the pieces together and moves the story along.

“The show takes place in limbo, except every so often it delves into an assassin’s backstory,” said director Jeannine Frumess ’09. “It’s a minimalist set so that it doesn’t detract from the material.”

Assassins, and those who would be may seem like unpleasant, even incendiary, material for a musical. However Sondheim balances the serious questions about the American social and political conditions that created these people with mordant humor, intrigue and suspense.

“It’s very intelligent and brilliantly, intricately crafted,” said Frumess. “It’s also ridiculously funny.”

In spite of the dark subject, some consider “Assassins” to be more of a comedy, according to Ben Palacios ’11, who plays Leon Czolgosz, a Polish immigrant inspired to act after meeting anarchist Emma Goldman. “If you take the show too seriously, it becomes too depressing, especially when you are acting in it.” Czolgosz assassinated President William McKinley in 1901 in an attempt to call attention to the plight of the immigrant worker in American society.

“There is a lot of pain behind the [show’s] humor,” said Kathryn Kozlark ’11, who plays Sara Jane Moore, the 45-year-old woman who attempted to assassinate President Gerald Ford in 1975.

In the musical, Moore is portrayed as a housewife trying to validate her radical credentials and serves as comic relief. “I empathize with Moore, because I think [her assassination attempt] was really a cry for attention,” said Kozlark. “She is a very confused woman trying to figure out who she is.”

In the roles of presidential assassins, the actors have struggled to come to terms with difficult mentalities of their characters. They try to withhold harsh judgment in an attempt to understand their characters’ backgrounds and states of mind at their infamous moment.

Nick Trotta ’11 plays Booth, the successful stage actor and Confederate sympathizer who went down in the history books when he assassinated President Abraham Lincoln in 1865.

“What I’ve discovered about [Booth] is that he really wanted to believe he was doing something for the benefit of all people,” said Trotta. “The funny thing about Booth is that he is an actor…He turned his life into a play and raised the stakes to the highest level.”

Frumess varied her production from the original script by turning the role of the Balladeer into an ensemble of six. “The Balladeer was an omnipotent narrator above the influence of the assassins,” said Frumess. “There was also a chorus that played the American people. I combined the two so that the Balladeers represent the collective American consciousness.”

Sybil Johnson ’11, who plays one of the Balladeers, said, “Because we are all playing the same part, we all play off of each other. It makes for an interesting dynamic onstage.”

In a show that spans a century-and-a-half of history marked by the tragedy of these assassinations, Sondheim and John Weidman, who wrote the book, pose the question, “Why would someone do that?” The response is a unique interpretation of the American dream from the perspective of marginalized, vivid outsiders.

“This is a play that does not have a resolution,” said Trotta. “Because of that people should walk away from this performance having learnt something on what it means to be a free American and what the limits are on pursuing happiness.”