Assassins aim for GPAC audience

A TALENTED ensemble of actors, singers and comedians will feature in a new production of Stephen Sondheim’s Assassins at Geelong Performing Arts Centre (GPAC) next week.
Independent theatre company Watch This will present the show hot on the heels of debut production Pacific Overland, which was nominated for three Green Room Awards.
Artistic director Sonya Suares was excited to recreate Sondheim’s complex, innovative musical for Geelong.
“We’re piloting a new model to tour large-scale shows to regional communities who would otherwise have limited access to this kind of work,” she said.
“It’s a pretty special project. Getting 21 people on the road is no mean feat, this being only our second year of operation. ”
Sondheim and John Weidman’s black comedy kicks off amid the lurid debris of a traveling carnival, taking the audience on a kaleidoscopic ride through the psychological landscape of nine notorious historical figures who made attempts on the lives of American presidents.
Sondheim’s score for Assassins runs from folk to ragtime to big Broadway ballads, hoedowns and barbershop quartets.
Weidman’s story examines the lives, loves and lunacy of nine American assassins, including John Wilkes Booth, John Hinckley, Lee Harvey Oswald and Sarah Jane Moore.
Director Tyran Parke described Assassins as “both terrifically funny and terrifying”.
“As a show it strikes that perfect balance between challenging ideas and sheer entertainment.
“Having worked for many years on Sondheim projects and with the composer himself, I’m thrilled to be revisiting material that demands so much from both performers and audiences.”
The cast includes Anne Wood and Nick Simpson-Deeks alongside Mark Dickinson, Glaston Toft,
Shane Nagle, Luigi Lucente, Rowan Witt, Nicholas Christo, Tod Strike, Sonya Suares, James
Millar, Johanna Allen, Jennifer Reed, and Leighton Young.
GPAC hosts Assassins from 23 to 25 October.