Not all musicals are glitz and glamour or romantic epics sweeping us up in tragic love from the barricades to Saigon. Take the latest top notch and star lead production at the Menier Chocolate Factory which seems certain to be West End bound when it finishes its run there in March.In this rarely revived show he brings together a motley collection of individuals who've murdered or attempted to murder presidents of the United States. Like a convention of nutcases they gather led by Lincoln's assassin, John Wilkes Booth, relive their moment of ignominy and achieve a funny kind of validation from Lee Harvey Oswald's shooting of JFK.
They make grisly and seductive company and script writer John Weidman spares us none of their twisted logic, by turns pathetic and funny.
Director Gary Lloyd and designer Soutra Gilmour have transformed the theatre into a carnival scene straight out of a horror film. We enter the space through the mouth of a giant and menacing clown. Inside the audience sit either side of a strip of dirt littered with carnival debris including another gigantic clown head, smashed and lying on its side, and a burnt out dodgem car. At one end hangs a sign that says “hit” at the other there's a sign that says “miss”. As each assassin relives the moment when they made an attempt on a president's life these light up depending on whether the assassination was successful or not. Those understudying the main roles mill around the space as cheerless gawping spectators. Everything seems to be covered in a greasy dust.
A sort of fairground barker offers out guns like party treats. His clown makeup smears his mouth with red grease paint like a weeping bloody sore. Our cast of characters step up, take a weapon and in scene and song reveal the darkness in their hearts.
It's good to see Booth afforded a little nobility; Lincoln was far from the saint he's been portrayed as recently. Nothing justifies his murder of course but he certainly warranted the accusations of tyranny. Booth is handsome and suave as portrayed by Broadway star Aaron Tveit, whilst Mike McShane is chilling as Nixon’s would be killer. In a filthy Santa suit, he records creepy messages to celebrities he'll never meet on a cassette player hanging from a strap around his neck. The man is an unlanced boil of suppressed anger and loneliness.
Popular TV comedy performer Catherine Tate plays one of the less defined characters, unbalanced and of low intelligence this suburban mum seems to be driven to kill by a whim, her son playing up and following a chance meeting with Frome, a disciple of cult leader Charles Manson. Carly Bawden is terrific as this haunted, brain washed misfit.
The songs are an eclectic mix skilfully reflecting the range of periods in which the protagonists live. From the 1890s to the 1990s. I particularly like the Vaudeville-like songs given to Andy Nyman as the creepily upbeat Charles Guiteau. Another highlight is the bitter sweet and equally chilling love song Unworthy of Your Love sung by Bawden and Harry Morrison as John Hickley Jnr whilst fawning over Jodie Foster, an obsession that would drive him to fire at Ronald Reagan.
For a long while it's unclear where all this is leading. Aside from their crime or attempted crime, these strange figures find they have little in common or sympathy for each other. It's only in the final JFK scene that the writers feel they've bound everyone together, almost as a political movement, soiled and soiling an American Dream in which, as they sing, “Everybody has the Right to be Happy”.
Ultimately the shows po-faced portentousness renders it empty and pretentious. It's so pleased with itself you'd think the creators were the first people to spot the hollowness at heart of America's self congratulation. And ironically the thing that's united these Assassins in infamy is not Kennedy's murder but the fact that Sondheim has put them all into the same musical!
Definitely not a show for children, with the slightly naughty burlesque nudity to it. But the adults that go will be as amazed as any child seeing their first circus act, as there are some great performances here.