KPFA Theatre Critic Richard Wolinsky reviews “Assassins” by Stephen Sondheim and John Weidman, at Oakland Theatre Project extended to April 12, 2026.
TEXT OF REVIEW:
When Stephen Sondheim and John Weidman’s Assassins first opened in 1990, the show focused on the relationship between America’s gun culture and the need to be seen. Looking at presidential assassins and would-be assassins, we see desperate people finding all kinds of excuses to rationalize their actions.
Today, mass shooters don’t care about being seen, and obviously neither do the masked thugs of ICE. But Assassins still speaks to us in different ways, as is evident in the production now at Oakland Theatre Project through April 5th.
As Oakland Theatre Project’s Executive Artistic Director Michael Socrates Moran says , Assassins was always a work of experimental theatre, so why not experiment further and turn a show, which usually features eight actors, into a one-person tour de force, signifying modern day loneliness and desperation.
He notes that we’ve all become separated from the community experience, constantly checking our phones, watching films at home, shopping without going to a shop. Those solo experiences breed the same disconnection that gave rise to these would be and actual assassins.
In addition, there’s a line in the show, about returning America to what it was, which resonates deeply with Trump’s entire movement, as if MAGA itself is now a single-focused assassin.
A concept musical, Assassins takes place in an imaginary early 20th Century fair midway, filled with games, rides and hawkers. Each assassin is there, together and alone. Taking us from John Wilkes Booth past the Reagan and Ford would-be killers, and then back to Lee Harvey Oswald.
In this production, that all rests on the shoulders of Adam Kuve Niemann, who plays all the assassins and all the minor characters. He sings the choral songs and the duets, switching back and forth, and he’s phenomenal.
The operative mood of the country as performed here though, isn’t loneliness, it’s anger, an anger that explodes in the songs, emphasizing the atonality of the music, which matches the madness and despair of the characters. It is the seething and explosive anger of today’s America, and it turns Assassins into something very contemporary.
Where this Assassins is less successful is during the scenes between the songs. Some work well enough, others, with overlapping dialogue, stop the show dead in its tracks, as do the long pauses that give the actor time to breathe and regroup. But when Assassins does work, which is most of the time, the results are revelatory and why ultimately, this Assassins is unforgettable.
Assassins plays at Flax Art and Design through April 5th. For more information you can go to oaklandtheatreproject.org. I’m Richard Wolinsky on Bay Area Theatre for KPFA.