Assassins (1991 Original Off-Broadway Cast)
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CD Details
Edition: Music CDFormat: Cast Recording
CD Release Date: 1991-08-13
Music Label: RCA Victor Broadway
Soundtracks:
- Everybody's Got the Right
- The Ballad of Booth
- How I Saved Roosevelt
- The Gun Song/Ballad of Czolgosz
- Unworthy of Your Love
- The Ballad of Guiteau
- Another National Anthem
- November 22, 1963
- Final Sequence: You Can Close the New York Stock Exchange/Everybody's
Music reviews of Assassins (1991 Original Off-Broadway Cast)
Music Review: Explaining the inexplicable; fathoming the unfathomable
Rating: 3 Stars
Listening to this recording of Assassins again for the first time in nearly a decade, I was struck by what a rationalist Stephen Sondheim is. (Okay, I've always known that, but this recording made it really hit home.) The thread that runs throughout this show--often missed by critics--is the attempt to understand and explain acts of madness and futility. We know the reasons Booth, Guiteau, Czolgosz, Hinckley, Byck, Squeaky and Sarah Jane Moore killed or attempted to kill their targets, because they have told us in confessions, notes, etc. But Sondheim the artist is such a rationalist that he must find an explanation for the actions of Lee Harvey Oswald. In real life we'll never know why Oswald killed Kennedy, or whether he acted alone or as part of a conspiracy. But here the reason, or at least *a* reason, a rationale, is provided, because--I have a feeling--Sondheim could not write this musical without providing a rationale for Oswald, because getting under the skin of his characters is what Sondheim's art has been about from the beginning. To me, the whole "missing out on the American Dream" subtext is just too easy, a cop-out, and for years this prevented me from fully appreciating this work. I found it lightweight when I first heard it, and while I still don't consider it top-drawer Sondheim, I am a lot more receptive to it now.
Still, there's something structural that doesn't work for me. The numbers are somehow largely stilted, small. I don't mean intimate and intricate. I mean not fleshed out as much as I think they need to be. There needs to be some sort of big anchor number. By "big" I don't mean a chorus line singing and dancing in sequins and tights. Rather I mean a big big thought that ties it all together, a la "Move On" from Sunday in the Park With George, or "Our Time" from Merrily We Roll Along, or the whole last 15 minutes of Sweeney Todd. It isn't here, at least musically. "Everybody's Got The Right" is just too small-concept a song to hang your hat on. I think there are the makings of a great work here, but I also feel like I'm experiencing a first draft; a very good first draft to be sure, but a first draft. (Note: I have not seen the recent Broadway revival and thus don't know if any of my objections have been answered. However, one new song "Something Just Broke," which I have heard, sounds a lot, both musically and conceptually, like "Four Black Dragons" from Pacific Overtures, and this, as well as hearing Bounce recently, is leading me to believe that Sondheim is starting to repeat himself as an artist.)
The recording is fine, but sterile; I wish a bigger and *livelier* orchestra were used. I don't a credit for Paul Gemignani as conductor here--though many of the musicians are the same ones in other Sondheim shows--and I think they could use him. As someone else mentioned, the music just sounds *cold* here. It's funcitonal, but never once rises above something we'd hear in a modern museum's high-tech interactive exhibit on the American experience. It sounds canned, in other words. The performances are good, but none is great, and some are just too hammy and broad for the dark material. Sometimes the justaposition works well, in pieces such as "The Gun Song" and "How I Saved Roosevelt," both of which contain the types of ironies and observations we look for in Sondheim. I'd recommend this CD for its interesting perspective and daring and unusual subject matter (how many people today know about Sam Byck, after all?), but I'd like to see a rethinking and rewriting of this work. It's fascinating and rewarding, but to my mind not quite finished...
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