Assassins, Uniform Theatre at Edmonton Fringe 2025. Photo by bbcollective.
Assassins (Stage 36, ArtsHub Ortona)
By Liz Nicholls, .ca
“All you have to do is move your little finger and you can change the world,” sings the disaffected actor John Wilkes Booth in Assassins. And he did just that in 1865 in a theatre in Washington D.C.
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In Stephen Sondheim’s darkly comic 1990 musical, Booth is a paid-up member of the macabre and raffish shooting gallery of men and women who killed American presidents, or at least tried to. There is something eerie about the way that this step-right-up carnival of the aggrieved, the disappointed, the disenfranchised, the disturbed, the unremarkable, from Booth to Lee Harvey Oswald, exercising their right to be extraordinary, bursts into the Now like it belongs here. And there’s something inspiring (thank you, Fringe), too, about the way a new generation of young musical theatre talent is drawn to it.
Sarah Dowling’s 10-actor production with a live band, to be found in a first-time BYOV, the ArtsHub Ortona in the river valley, is the work of the musical theatre company Uniform Theatre. Even the cavalier way that guns get handed around is unnerving, not least because it’s somehow inevitable in our moment in history. The continuing theme of a perpetual winter of our discontent has never been more frightening. Democratic ideals are up against it in a new way. Immigrants are up against. “No one can be put in jail for their dreams” has a more sinister reverb now. And hey, fantasies of assassination refuse to be squelched (c’mon haven’t you had some?).
The musical is a strange mixture of the ironic and the heartfelt. And the Sondheim score is a fascinating array of ballads that hearken back to the Great American Songbook, mixed with crackling musical theatre songs — aspirational, romantic, comic. And, since the vocal talents of the cast do vary in force and easeful-ness — the echo-y acoustics in the lovely brick and wood-lined chamber of the venue, which has a perfectly vintage look, are a big challenge — some musical numbers land more successfully than others, in truth. But in Dowling’s production the characters step out of history in vivid outlines drawn by the actors.
Unworthy of Your Love, a sweet duet between Manson disciple Squeaky Fromme (Bella King) and J.W. Hinckley (Brian Christensen), the Jodie Foster stalker who tried to pop Ronald Reagan in 1981, has a lyrical touchdown. I Am A Terrifying and Imposing Figure, a nutbar ode to himself by the James Garfield assassin Charles Guiteau, who’s singing “look on the bright side” as they put the noose around his neck, gets a crackling performance from Anthony Hurston. Samuel Byck, who picketed the White House in a Santa suit and tried to hire a 747 to take out Richard Nixon there, is compellingly conjured by Michael Vetsch.
Aran McAnally as wry Balladeer, who pops up from time to time guitar in hand to annotate the storytelling, sets the jaunty tone. The single funniest scene is the farcical failed assassination of Gerald Ford by King’s star-struck Squeaky Fromme and the chronic klutz Sara Jane Moore (the very funny Alyson Horne). And it’s a highlight.
Getting a ticket to this Fringe hit won’t be easy. But, hey, “everyone has the right to be happy.” And this is a chance to see what a new generation of musical theatre talent can do with a masterwork.
