Cast Album Review – Assassins (The 2022 Off-Broadway Cast Recording)
Stephen Sondheim’s score for Assassins has always impressed me for how the late composer-lyricist captured the flavors of Americana: Sousa-like marches, barber shop quartet, folk ballad, and soft pop music, in telling a story that is inherently American. Quibble if you must about the musical’s themes, but there is no other musical more relevant in the post-Trump era than Assassins. Some have called it anti-patriotic, and others have erroneously stamped it as glorifying the work of psychotic, would be (and sometimes successful) killers of Presidents of the United States. Assassins is, in fact, a lament of the American dream and how its false promises and failure to deliver have driven individuals and, metaphorically, society as a whole, to the edge. One of the song’s in the musical is titled “Something Just Broke,” a reaction to the assassination of John F. Kennedy. In reality, Assassins digs deeper than mere mourning, challenging our blind patriotism and posits the theory that the United States of America has been breaking since its inception. What better way for Sondheim to convey the generations of unrealized American dreams than to say it with the music that made America?
New York City’s Classic Stage Company revived Stephen Sondheim and John Weidman’s Assassins for a short stint beginning in November of 2021 (a run that was mercilessly cut short by the Coronavirus) under the direction of John Doyle. Despite its short tenure, Broadway Records wisely preserved this show with a new cast recording produced by Matt Stine. Though this incarnation of Assassins may not be the definitive recording of the piece, it is a well-made album that shines particularly in how crisply and cleanly it captures Sondheim’s lyrics. Prior recordings haven’t always achieved this, but here you will revel in every word, every rhyme, and marvel, once again, at the lyricist’s ability to get at the intellectual heart of any theme he explores. He never asks you to sympathize with these men and women, but he does give you plenty of details to help you empathize with their reasoning. How glorious that every thought and theory comes across here.
The cast of the CSC production is a top-notch assemblage of talent, coming together to form a tight ensemble who navigate that uneasy balance between a very dark premise and happenings, and the deliciously, devilishly comedic moments in the show. Ethan Slater, as the Balladeer (and ultimately Lee Harvey Oswald) is a standout, bringing a folksy twang and whimsical (and sometimes sinister) omniscience to such ditties as “The Ballad of Booth,” “The Ballad of Czolgosz” and “The Ballad of Guiteau.” Steven Pasquale is a haunting John Wilkes Booth. With his always creamy voice and playful delivery, Pasquale offers a deft characterization of a failed actor turned murderer in his share of “The Ballad of Booth.” It’s a riveting listen. The Charles J. Guiteau of Will Swenson is a masterclass in how to play a tortured soul turned maniacal, sociopathic egotist with a tendency toward religious zealotry. There is a lot going on in “The Ballad of Guiteau” and Swenson mines every nuance of this complex character. The rest of the cast, which also includes Judy Kuhn (I always want to hear more of her lovely voice), Adam Chanler-Berat, Tavi Gevinson, Andy Grotelueschen, Wesley Taylor, Brandon Uranowitz, and Eddie Cooper each stand out in their own way and their individual and collective presences alone makes this album a must-have.
The album’s only drawback is a minor one, but one that somehow sticks in my mind as I completed a few listenings. The gun shots, usually startling and piercing in past recordings of Assassins, are muted here and don’t have a jarring intensity that keeps the listener on edge. The same can be said of the missing sound effect of the trap door dropping and the thud of the falling body at the conclusion of Guiteau’s hanging. It’s the little touches like these that have always made Assassins an uneasy experience, but also an adrenaline-inducing one. It might seem like such a minor thing, but it did make a difference in this listener’s experience.
Setting aside that one minor objection, for every other reason a show album collector needs to own an album, the recording of CSC’s Assassins is a required gem. The spare but effective orchestrations by Greg Jarrett propel this version of Assassins with a driving intensity and colorful use of instrumentation. The packaging designed by Robbie Rozelle demonstrates his usual aplomb for mixing credits and lyrics with production shots and coming up with a polished result on par with a souvenir program. Above all, the album preserves, with such precision and clarity, the wordplay of one of Broadway’s greatest lyricists. This album serves as a perfect tribute to our recently-passed genius.
