J. William Davis - THEATRICS

Stephen Sondheim and John Weidman

Cotesloe Theatre, London

Assassins is a twisted celebration of America, a land where any boy can grow up to kill a president. exploring the motives of nine individuals who attempt to assassinate US presidents. Through witty lyrics and an emotive score, it exposes a sinister underside to the American Dream.

The stage is painted in an abstraction of the American flag. In the centre of this space sits a rotating timbre scenic unit. It can be turned 360° to be positioned in numerous different angles to the audience. This unit can be transformed by opening or closing doors, hanging lamps and adding furniture. Through these changes the stage becomes the White House, a fairground shooting gallery, the Ford Theatre in Washington DC, a hide-out in a barn, a bar, the Pan-American Exhibition, death row with an electric chair, a city park, a rumpus room, a prison gallows, a automobile's front seat and the Dallas Book Depository.

The characters are dressed in a patriot pallet of red, white and blue. Each is dressed within the period of their crime. They intermingle into each other's stories without ever leaving their own time.

Plan +
rotation diagram

'Everybody's
Got the
Right'

Rotating
set details

Dallas Book
Depository

'The Ballad
of Guiteau'

'Unworthy of
Your Love'

'Ballad of
Csolgosz'

Scene 16 - 'You can close the New York Stock Echange'-Lee Harvey Oswald is encouraged to shoot JFK by all the other assassins, at the Dallas Book Depository.

Scene 15 - 'Another National Anthem'-the assassins are disaffected with the American dream.

Scene 12 - 'The Ballad of Guiteau'-Garfield's assassin, Charles Guiteau cakewalks to the gallows singing that "I'm going to the Lordy".

Scene 10 - 'Unworthy of Your Love-John Hinckley and Squeaky Fromme meet in his rec room to sing about their obsessive loves.

Scene 4 - 'The Ballad of Czolgosz'-The electric chair is ultimately the fate of President McKinley's killer Leon Czolgosz.

Scene 1 - 'Everybody's Got the Right'- the assassins are encouraged to pick up a gun at a shooting gallery and go and shoot a president.

Storyboard - main scenic element rotates, doors are opened and closed and furnishing as well as hanging lamps are changed.

Scene 4 - Details of the revolving set: pre-sets for the next scene are made behind the closed panels.

Plan - painted floor pattern, sight lines-rotated scenic element with panels open, diagrams of scenic element rotations.

Storyboard-main scenic element rotates, doors are opened and closed and furnishing as well as hanging lamps are changed.

Costumes and precedents for Jon Wilkes Booth, who shot and President Abraham Lincoln in 1865, and Sara Jane Moore who shot at President Gerald Ford in 1981.

'Another
National Anthem'