Beginnings and Endings

La Shawn Banks as Malvolio in American Player’s Theatre “Twelfth Night”

With horrific mass shooting incidents and charged political conventions only slightly receding in our current events rear view mirror, the opening strains of Stephen Sondheim’s Assassins are disconcerting to say the least: “You wanna shoot a President?” sings a demonic carnival barker (Jonathan Gillard Daly) as a collection of ne’er-do-wells wander on to a crumbling carnival set.

But for composer Sondheim and dramatist John Weidman, creating a little discomfort is part of the plan, as you might guess from a musical that brings eight Presidential assassins onstage with the mantra, “Everybody’s got a right to their dreams.”

Set against the backdrop of Daly’s carnival side show, Sondheim’s show is more revue than full-scale musical. Scenes and songs sketch in the details of deadly motives, and the characters come together to reiterate the contorted American Dream that is the show’s somewhat one-note theme.

But it is Sondheim, so the music is certainly not mere monotones. Director Mark Clements has assembled an impressive cast—including many Broadway veterans—that handles the master’s material with the right blend of craft and character. The song collection is one of Sondheim’s most eclectic, each one written in a distinct style to capture its era and character: the Vaudeville softshoe of the opening number, the Steven Foster folksiness of The Ballad of Booth, and the Sousa-like bluster of Charles Guiteau’s march to the scaffold. The unseen eight-musician orchestra lead by conductor Dan Kazemi captured the nuances and complexities of Sondheim’s music.

And while the music is certainly center stage, there’s no shortage of acting talent here, with several of the cast members delivering knockout monologues (Lee Ernst as Samuel Byck, the man who plotted to kill Richard Nixon by flying a plane into the White House) and some dazzling comic duets (Sarah Litzsinger and Caroline O’Connor as Squeaky Fromme and Sara Jane Moore—the unlikely team that tried to shoot Gerald Ford).

The dark comedy only adds to the uneasiness that pervades the show—we are, after all, laughing at disturbed people who are driven to unspeakable acts—and the brash conceit of the Assassins is that both the potential perpetrators and their politician victims are driven by the same urges—Follow your dreams;  Be remembered;  Make a difference. After all, as the carnival barker says: It’s a free country.

There’s also a wealth of timely resonance in David Hare’s Skylight, which opened at the American Player’s Theatre indoor Touchstone Theatre in early July and runs through October 20^th. The Spring Green theater is usually thought of as a summer destination, but with the new indoor space allowing them to extend its season into the fall, there’s every reason to make the 2 1/2 –hour drive west. I saw two shows over Labor Day weekend that were particularly memorable.

David Hare’s 1995 play explores the relationship of Tom, a London restaurant mogul (Brian Mani), and his former lover, Kyra (Greta Wholrabe). A year after his wife dies, he seeks her out to gain some closure to their six-year affair, which ended abruptly when his wife contracted cancer.

It’s a potent, almost soapy premise, but Hare uses it brilliantly to explore the nature of marital love, monogamy, mortality and the moral questions raised by the day-to-day of existence. And Hare layers his social ideas into the mix. Tom is a conservative “job creator” (definitely one of the One-Percent), and Greta has decided to teach school in a troubled neighborhood. As the pair parse out their possible futures, there is much heated talk about the meaning of life, comfort, work, and truth.

Mani played this part almost 15 years ago in a Milwaukee Chamber Theatre production, and he’s grown into it well. He’s an actor of impressive power and command, which suits him here. But he is also capable of revealing the tenderness and vulnerability underneath his Savile Row suits. Greta Wohlrabe was a Milwaukee Rep intern in 2010-11, and played opposite Mani (again as his younger extra-marital lover) in Renaissance Theatreworks Honour. Here, she shows she is an actor of impressive depth and maturity. Someone to definitely look out for in coming seasons.

You also have a few more weeks to catch that Shakespeare chestnut, Twelfth Night, in a production directed by David Frank that is simply overflowing with pleasure and delight. This is Frank’s last year as APT’s Artistic Director, and this production is a fitting swan song to everything he’s achieved over the last 20 years. This Twelfth Night was conceptually clean and saturated with great readings of some of Shakespeare’s most rich and dazzling poetry. Staged outdoors on a simple space, it’s about as close to realizing the a 17^th-century afternoon at the Globe as you can get these days (unless, of course, you fly over to London to catch a play on the South Bank). The comedy is necessarily broad on occasion (as it must be when playing to a 1000-plus seat house), but it is winning and satisfying throughout.

Here, standouts are Mani, again, as the boisterous Sir Toby Belch; Mark Goetzinger as Sir Andrew; and La Shawn Banks as the rubber-faced Malvolio. But the centerpiece is an endearing comic performance by Cristina Panfilio as Viola, who delivers some of Shakespeare’s most beautiful language, but also uses vocal squeaks and sputters to hilarious effect. Twelfth Night is a great Valentine to the world, and it’s clear that this production is an APT Valentine to David Frank for two decades of great theater.