Stephen Sondheim’s Assassins, presented by Out of the Box Theatre Company, is a series of musical vignettes set in a purgatorial carnival of the damned. The cast of oddballs, all based on historical figures, have one common motivation — they’ve decided to shoot the U.S. president. Directed by Samantha Eve, Assassins is a labor of love with a strong cast of local musical-theater all-stars.
Brian Hotchkin, the sinister “Shoot a Prez, Win a Prize” proprietor, sets the tone for this freakshow of misunderstood souls. Rob Grayson shows off a powerful voice as would-be French ambassador Charles Guiteau, hawking his memoirs on the way to the gallows. The show’s comedy duo of ineptitude, Sara Jane Moore and Squeaky Fromme (Marisol Miller-Wave and Naomi Jane Voigt), are two very different women with the same dark interior monster. It’s nice to see Miller-Wave, who is almost unrecognizable as a “square” 70s housewife, getting the chance to show her range as an actress.
Out of the Box Theatre Company’s ‘Assassins’ | Photo: Courtesy 
Out of the Box Theatre Company’s ‘Assassins’ | Photo: Courtesy 
Out of the Box Theatre Company’s ‘Assassins’ | Photo: Courtesy 
Out of the Box Theatre Company’s ‘Assassins’ | Photo: Courtesy 
Out of the Box Theatre Company’s ‘Assassins’ | Photo: Courtesy
The show looks at American culture’s bad (poverty, civil unrest, mental illness) and ugly (guns). Of the nine assassins, the most weight is given to John Wilkes Booth (Brian Hoyson), who plays a devil on the shoulder of characters in need of murderous inspiration; and Lee Harvey Oswald (Ryan Beaghler), blamed for punching a hole in the white picket fence of America’s post-war suburban glow. Beaghler’s voice was tenuous (after a week of run-throughs, vocal fatigue is a real issue), but the control he exercised to stay on the ledge gave Oswald an edge, adding interesting tension to the scene.
The staging of Assassins is less literal than Out of the Box’s typical style, embracing the flight of fancy. I would advocate for a louder gunshot — there was room for a more jarring sound cue to heighten intensity. Otherwise, Assassins is artfully constructed. See the show at Center Stage through April 19. See centerstagetheater.org
