A triumphant reframing of Stephen Sondheim’s musical

There can be no getting around the fact that Assassins is the Stephen Sondheim musical that is easier to admire than to love. Adored by critics and too often puzzled over by audiences, this plotless piece centres on nine disparate characters who have attempted – some with success and some without – to assassinate the President of the United States.

The triumph of Polly Findlay’s ultra-stylish production, magnificently staged in the sweeping Festival Theatre in Chichester, is to foreground the unsettling links between these troubled historical souls and the razzmatazz, gun-happy culture of today’s American right.

Before the action proper starts, the ensemble assemble onstage to stoke a ramped-up carnival atmosphere redolent of a contemporary US right-wing rally. There are fancy-dress animal heads, graphics and fizzy drinks galore, as the perma-tanned, uncannily Trumpian Proprietor (Peter Forbes) leads the catchy first number “Everybody’s Got the Right”.

Designer Lizzie Clachan provides a super-size feast of a spectacle, as big screens wittily tuned to fictional rolling news channel CCN flank the stage and the Proprietor calls up the excitable cast from among the audience. This is politics transformed into the most vapid game show imaginable, with democracy itself as the star prize.

John Wilkes Booth (Danny Mac), the actor and assassin of Abraham Lincoln, weaves through the piece with evangelical charisma. Sondheim and book writer John Weidman naughtily suggest that perhaps Booth killed Lincoln to cheer himself up after a slew of bad reviews.

John Hinckley Jr (Jack Shalloo), Ronald Reagan’s would-be killer, is decisively portrayed as a lonely incel obsessed by Jodie Foster. He serenades his idol in the faux-naif “Unworthy of Your Love” and his low-key drippiness is in marked contrast to the pitch-black comedy antics of Charles Manson acolyte Lynette ‘Squeaky’ Fromme (Carly Mercedes Dyer) and Sara Jane Moore (Amy Booth-Steel) – two more triple-namers, I note – who had Gerald Ford in their not-very-accurate sights.

At the evening’s end, Booth talks to that other infamous three-named killer Lee Harvey Oswald (Samuel Thomas) and explains what he sees as the difference between murder – a “tawdry little crime” – and the noble act of assassination.

A giant projected roulette wheel adorned with images of various presidents intermittently fills those giant screens. When the wheel stops spinning it signals that the Commander-in-Chief is in great peril, although some episodes are easier to follow than others. I must confess that there were moments when I was unsure of who the character speaking might be and some lengthy speeches provide further challenges.

For Sondheim lovers, this show will be a prize addition to the trophy cabinet. For general fans of musical theatre, do go – but go prepared.

To 24 June, cft.org.uk