‘Assassins’ at OCC is to die for

Heroes of American history have been celebrated in musicals like “1776” and “George M.”

Stephen Sondheim’s “Assassins” takes a hard look at its villains ? 13 people who share one common link: All attempted to assassinate a U.S. president. Four succeeded.

“Assassins” is not a new show. Orange Coast College produced it twice in the early 1990s, and no other local theater has touched it since. Thus it falls to OCC to introduce this visceral musical to a new generation of theatergoers, and the college does so with, well, a bang.

Director Beth Hansen has mounted a superior production in which all of the murderers or would-be murderers bring their cases to the court of playgoers’ opinion ? and there’s nary a weak link in the bunch.

Hansen, who also serves as musical director for her two-piece orchestra, has set the show in a sort of cocktail lounge purgatory reserved for the various psychotics who took potshots at a president, with special reverence reserved for the four who succeeded. Each gets his or her place in the spotlight and the chance to overpower the others ? yet in the end, it’s a glorious draw.

Staged without intermission over nearly two hours in order to sustain the intensity, “Assassins” shifts its focus and disregards chronology. John Wilkes Booth, for instance, may be followed by the two ditzy women who tried unsuccessfully to bring down Gerald Ford in 1975, the matronly Sara Jane Moore and Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme, a Charles Manson disciple.

There are villains you’ve probably never heard of ? Charles Guiteau, Garfield’s assassin; Leon Czolgosz, McKinley’s slayer; Samuel Byck, who hijacked a plane with the intent of crashing into the White House and offing Nixon; and Giuseppe Zangara who tried unsuccessfully to kill FDR in 1933. Modern-day gunmen like John Hinckley, who shot Reagan, and Lee Harvey Oswald, JFK’s assassin, complete the picture.

A few, such as Booth, superbly played by Michael Cavinder, had political motives. Most were just plain nut cases ? Byck (Peter Westenhofer) frothing at the mouth in a Santa Claus suit, the Ford targeters Fromme (Katie McGuire) and Moore (Karen Merrill) and downtrodden worker Czolgosz (Rudolph Niemann).

Then there is Guiteau, a showman par excellence as depicted by Scott K. Ratner, who does a soft-shoe number on his way to the gallows. Ratner’s grinning, overpowering presence would upstage a less capable cast, but Hansen has filled even the ensemble roles with impressive vocal and interpretive talent.

Topher Mauerhan delves into the troubled psyche of the still-living John Hinckley with disturbing eloquence, highlighted by his fawning duet with McGuire, “I Would Do Anything for Your Love,” each singing to his or her hero ? Jody Foster in his case, Manson in hers. Merrill provides one of the show’s few comic elements as an untrained assailant who can’t locate her gun and loses its bullets when she finally does.

The climactic moment arrives late in the play when Brendon Kondratczyk, who has served as Sondheim’s balladeer, transforms himself into Oswald, a suicidal loser goaded into shooting JFK by Cavinder’s persuasive Booth. Powerful performances by both actors carry this scene beautifully.

“Assassins” is not normally ranked in the upper echelon of the Sondheim canon, due to its supposed glorification of history’s bad apples, but the OCC production demonstrates how riveting and thought-provoking this property can be. This is as fully realized a show as you’re likely to see on any local stage this year.

IF YOU GO

WHAT: “Assassins”

WHERE: Orange Coast College Drama Lab Theater, Costa Mesa

WHEN: Closing performances tonight and Saturday at 8 p.m., Sunday at 2:30

COST: $7 & $8

CALL: (714) 432-5880hbi.24-titus-BPhotoInfoF61QSICD20060512gzgnh2ke(LA)