Bridewell Centre – until 27 September 2025
Reviewed by Claire Roderick
4****
When SEDOS do Sondheim, you know it’s going to be special, and this energetic production of Assassins hits the mark with style.
Americon 2025 (Take Your Shot) is a flag-waving extravaganza with grinning cheerleaders instructing when to wave flags and cheer – so far, so normal USA. But the delegates at this conference are all people who have killed or attempted to kill presidents. Standing behind podiums with their names in lights, each assassin gets a time to shine with Sondheim giving each a particular musical style. The convention hosts (Anna Buckmaster and Chris Daniel Cahill) are wonderfully polished and insincere, playing to the crowd and treating the delegates, standing stony faced as they view proceedings, like carnival freaks.
John Weidman’s book allows each person’s story and motivation some explanation in the downtime between songs as the convention takes breaks. The assassins’ reasons, including social injustice, burning anger, devotion to Charles Manson, are varied, but the underlying idea that “All you have to do is move your little finger to change the world” is consistent – with the charismatic John Wilkes Booth (Rourke Puksand laying on the snake oil charm) using this argument to convince the confused and embittered Lee Harvey Oswald (an intense Joe Dickens) to do the deed. Sondheim’s music soars and teases – getting the audience’s feet tapping to songs of violence and squeezing every emotion from fabulous duets and harmonies.
The cast are a joy, from the dynamic convention chorus and ensemble to the assassins themselves. Jake Dufton’s incredible voice brings gravitas and pathos to Leon Czolgosz, David Phipp-Davis is wonderfully and weirdly sympathetic as Guiseppe Zangara and Sam Sugarman is hilariously unhinged as the effervescent Charles Guiteau. Adam Moulder seethes with standup comedian style anger as Samuel Byck and Glen Jordan’s obsessed John Hincley Jr is creepily sweet and innocuous. The female assassins are a hoot, with Jessica Dawes’s flustered and frustrated Sara Jane Moore struggling to find her gun inside her ever-present handbag and Claire Brewin’s brainwashed Manson devotee veering between spaced out teen vibes and lost soul. Sometimes it is hard to remember that these are not professionals.
Dan Edge’s skilful direction creates a fantastic, heightened energy dynamic for this glorious parody of desperation and political violence, and Adrian Jeakins production design is wonderfully brash. The production adds another, more recent assassination attempt, reminding us that the grim reality behind the showmanship and theatre onstage is even more relevant and prevalent today.
Another triumph for the talented team at SEDOS.