There’s no cry more heartfelt in modern American drama than Willy Loman’s wife’s cry about her husband Willy in Death in a Salesman: “Attention, attention finally must be paid to such a person.” And it is startlingly referenced in John Weidman’s script for one of Sondheim’s most audacious concept musicals Assassins, which seeks to go into the minds and motivations of the diffuse group of misfits and losers who have made attempts on, and in many cases succeeded in taking, the lives of America’s presidents.
As John Wilkes Booth - the sometime actor who shot President Lincoln (while he was watching a show at Ford’s Theatre in DC) - tells John F. Kennedy’s assassin Lee Harvey Oswald, quotes the line to him, Oswald asks, “What’s that mean?” And Booth replies, “It’s from a play. About a salesman. A man very much like you, Lee. Independent, proud, a decent man who tries and tries but never gets a break. So he does something dumb. When things go really sour, when he realizes his whole life has been a failure built on lies, he kills himself. And when he’s dead, his wife stands at his grave and says attention must be paid. She has to beg the world to pay attention to this poor, misguided nobody.”
Actually, Linda says this in the first act when Willy’s still alive: I’m surprised someone as theatrically astute as Sondheim allowed the misquote. But perhaps variations of the truth and perceptions of reality are also at the heart of Weidman’s explanation of what leads the various assassins on their journey, so this theatrically inaccurate quotation is just another example of Booth’s skewed perspective. Especially when Weidman satisfyingly has Booth tell Oswald who he is, and Oswald replies, “John Wilkes Booth shot Abraham Lincoln”. Booth duly notes, “Attention has been paid.”
This is a show I have been paying attention to ever since I first queued, in the freezing snow, on a pavement outside the old Playwrights’ Horizons Theatre on W42nd Street in January 1991 for a ticket to see a preview of its original production. Later I saw it again, under slightly more comfortable conditions, when it received its UK premiere as Sam Mendes’s inaugural production as artistic director of the Donmar Warehouse the following year.
It was also the first show ever produced professionally by a then 19-year-old David Babani at Hampstead’s New End Theatre in 1997 during his summer hols after his first year at Bristol University, soon after quitting his degree to embark on a theatrical career full-time that has led him to his current position as master of the reinvented musical at the Menier Chocolate Factory (whose productions of Willy Russell’s Shirley Valentine and Educating Rita coincidentally become the latest to transfer to the West End today, opening officially at the Trafalgar Studios this afternoon and evening).
It’s a show about a country where it’s not so much possible for anyone to become the President as it is to shoot one, but I’ve not always been entirely convinced by its juxtapositions of powerful songs and extended scenes inbetween them to tell their stories. Though I don’t doubt its thrilling audacity, it sometimes seemed to me that it couldn’t make up its mind what sort of show it was: less a play or musical than a polemical revue, it requires verve and nerve to combine the two strands with equal vigour and rigour.
But on Friday, I finally saw a production that brought a forensic intensity to achieving that fine balance; and it was, once again, at the tiny Union Theatre in Southwark. I have seen Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd in productions from Drury Lane and Covent Garden to New York City Opera and Broadway, but none has ever startled, frightened or moved me quite as much as the one I saw at the Union in 2008, as I wrote here at the time: “It’s partly a question of a studio setting magnifying its claustrophobic intensity; but also, in these close-up quarters - with the cast sending shivers up your spine as they literally surround you - the unamplified singing of this always sensational score a chilling, thrilling delight.”
Now a kind of theatrical magic took hold again in this small, appropriately dank room. A musical about life’s losers was transformed into a thrilling fringe winner by director Michael Strassen, and it’s particularly striking how much the Union has upped its game in terms of casting, with lead roles being taken by such established West End actors as Glyn Kerslake, John Barr, Joe Alessi, Lisa Stokke and Nick Holder, alongside a palette of up-and-comers like Paul Callen (not to be confused with Daily Express critic Paul Callan), Alison Lardner and Adam Jarrell.
The only pity is that I’m writing this on Monday morning, two days after the show’s run ended. I am forever pointing out here that there is simply too much to see in London to keep track of it all, hard as I try; this was definitely a case of better late than never for me, but I hope that it can achieve some kind of further life.
Hi Mark,
I have to agree with you. Michael Strassen's production of Assassins, was quite simply sublime. One of the best productions I have seen this year.
Andrew
There was a fantastic production of it in Toronto earlier this year.
I also concur: Michael Strassen's production of 'Company' at the same venue last year was, for me, the definitive version, and by far the best thing I saw in 2009 ('A Little Night Music' at the Menier/Garrick was second, 'War Horse' third), and this darkly delightful production is, so far, my theatrical highlight of 2010.
I'd now make the trip down to London to see any Sondheim production to which Michael sets his expert hand: he totally "gets" the master's work and lets its genius and searing beauty not merely breath, but envelop you.
Let's hope attention has indeed been paid by enough to warrant the transfer that this excellent production so richly deserves.
As always, Mark Shenton and Andrew Keates know precisely what they are talking about and can be relied on to bring their deep understanding and appreciation and their fierce intelligence to topics theatrical. I have seen at least four different productions of "Assassins" and this one at the Union under Michael Strassen's superb direction was, in a word I rarely use, faultless. The best I have seen. I am still reeling from its power. Such a wonderful cast, such excellent musicians. The Union does it again. No less than 5 Off West End Award nominations - so well deserved. Definitely one of the best productions I have seen this year. It simply demands to be seen and I just hope that those who were unfortunate to have missed this sell out production will get a chance to see it - somewhere, some time.