Attempted Assassination of Donald Trump - When Life Imitates Art

Stephen Sondheim’s 1990 musical Assassins offered a commentary on the (then) nine assassins and would-be assassins who in real life had all aimed, or planned to aim, a firearm at the President of the United States.

In 2018 Louise Bakker directed a production of the show at London’s Pleasance Theatre that disgracefully added an image of President Trump to the musical's shooting alley line-up of the actual historical presidential targets, suggesting in her take on the show, that Trump deserved a bullet.

I called out this appalling incitement to violence in my review of that production and to her credit Bakker then removed Trump’s image from the shooting alley scene in subsequent performances of the show.

While there is no suggestion that Thomas Matthew Crooks who attempted to assassinate Donald Trump on Saturday had seen Bakker’s production, incitement to murder should never be allowed to masquerade as art.

Assassins - Review

Pleasance Theatre, London


**


Music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim
Book by John Weidman
Directed by Louise Bakker

UPDATE - Since this review was published, Louise Bakker has made a change to the show's finale that significantly reduces the political skew referred to below

The cast in rehearsal

Done well, Stephen Sondheim’s Assassins is a work of political beauty, offering up a delirium of perspectives upon the assassins and would-be assassins who over the USA’s recent centuries have fixed a serving President in their sights.

Done badly however and it becomes an interval-free tedium. Notwithstanding some occasional strong performances from its cast of ten (many of whom are badly let down by appalling sound balancing), Louise Bakker’s production values are shoddy from the outset, with her politically skewed finale proving a nadir of naive and clumsy disappointment.

Jordan Clarke’s band however are outstanding, and the 2 stars awarded by this review are for his quintet. See this show if you enjoy listening to Sondheim’s music played superbly. Otherwise, avoid.

Runs until 8th April