Tired of the election? Tired of negative ads? Tired of the truth twisting?

The University of Southern Maine has just the ticket: An indelicate, ribald musical that celebrates the stories of the men and women who tried or succeeded at killing U.S. presidents.

The musical “Assassins” opens at USM’s Corthell Concert Hall in Gorham on Friday and runs through the weekend with four performances.

The show, with music by Stephen Sondheim, is obviously controversial. At equal turns, it is outrageous, funny and deliciously tasteless, and certainly appropriate only for mature audiences.

Director Ed Reichert describes it like this: “I often compare it to Sondheim’s ‘Into the Woods,’ where he has a lot of famous fairytale characters we know and love interwoven into a new story. In ‘Assassins,’ we have nine people who tried or were successful at killing U.S. presidents. They all end up in the same story.”

The play is performed as a revue in one act, offering sketches of each assassin or would-be assassin. The score reflects the popular music of the eras depicted, referencing the sounds of Stephen Foster, John Philip Sousa and Aaron Copland.

The musical first opened Off-Broadway in 1990, and the 2004 Broadway production won five Tony Awards.

The characters include non-fictional as well as fictional characters, and an ensemble of six who each play multiple roles throughout.

The assassins will be played by Christopher Ellis (John Wilkes Booth), Matt West (John Hinckley Jr.), Brad Longfellow (Guissepe Zangara), Joshua Witham (Charles Guiteau), Caleb Lacy (Samuel Byck), Cameron Wright (Leon Czolgosz), Daniel Lane and Emily Bashier Davis (sharing the role of Sara Jane Moore), Jericah Potvin and Eileen Hanley (sharing the role of Lynette ‘Squeaky’ Fromme).

Jimmy McDonald doubles in the roles of the Balladeer and Lee Harvey Oswald, and Mel Bills plays the Proprietress.

“Assassins” is definitely a show for the season, Reichert said.

“The show is actually very pro-America and very American,” he said. “I just think it’s a really clever time to possibly distract people who are tired of debates and tired of issues at hand and tired of dealing with the election.”

The show has been both challenging and fun to prepare, the student actors said.

“I’m so used to the comedies that I have been doing, it’s fun to take a stab at somebody who is real,” Lane said.

Lacy plays Sam Byck, a tire salesman who tried to kill Richard Nixon. His job as an actor is to humanize Byck in a way the audience can relate to and perhaps sympathize with.

“He’s an interesting man,” Lacy said. “He had a wife and kids, and his wife left him. He hatched this plan because of the way he saw the world. He wanted to hijack a plane and crash it into the White House.

“That’s an interesting fact, just because of what happened on 9/11. We’ve seen something like that actually happen. That an American was thinking about it all those years earlier is really interesting.”

 

 

 

 

 

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