Cygnet Sits on Assassins

Stage

STEPHEN SONDHEIM MUSICALS aren’t noted for being sunny, bright and optimistic. His most acclaimed work celebrates a barber who slits throats, with his victims baked into pies. Another Sondheim work, equally controversial at its 1990 debut, is Assassins, which featured characters based on actual and attempted killers of U.S. presidents.

It’s the kind of show favored by Cygnet Theatre, which likes to offer a mix of popular and offbeat productions and had scheduled Assassins on its Old Town stage. In January, however, Cygnet replaced it with a return of Bed and Sofa (April 23–May 31), a considerably different type of musical. Cygnet’s original B&S staging, in 2004, was a crowd- and critic-pleaser and won numerous honors, including a San Diego Theatre Critics Circle Award for Outstanding Musical Revival.

Why the change? “A couple of reasons,” says Cygnet artistic director Sean Murray, who helms B&S. “The first was financial. We’re trying to make adjustments to avoid mounting overly costly productions. Assassins has a cast of 15, five of whom were planned to be Equity [actors], plus four musicians. The show, in the best of times, is a challenge to market. In a difficult time, it looked even more challenging.

“Secondly, the show’s themes are about the failure of the American Dream for an underclass of disaffected people, who choose assassination as their means to be recognized and acknowledged for what they perceive as wrongs. But the play is not an endorsement of assassination, and unfortunately, that’s how it appears to those unfamiliar with the show.

“In addition, we realized we are celebrating a new administration, and to produce a musical about assassinating the president so close to his inauguration gives the show a context that isn’t intended. In a more neutral time——not near an election or inauguration——the themes can speak for themselves, but in proximity to recent events, it takes on overtones that neither Cygnet nor the authors intended.” In 2001, Assassins ran into a similar problem on Broadway. A revival was scheduled for the fall, but then came 9/11, and the musical was postponed until 2004.

Bed and Sofa, with a cast of three, is adapted from a 1926 Russian silent film about a couple who, during a housing shortage, allow a friend to sleep on the couch. Not surprisingly, romantic complications ensue. Murray stages it in a black-and-white motif, giving it the paradoxical look and sound of an operatic silent film. Because the Old Town Theatre has a thrust stage, he says, the audience will find the play more intimate than before.

Cygnet’s other offering, on the company’s Rolando stage, is new to our city. Mauritius (April 2–May 10) is a comic thriller about the sticky underside of stamp collecting. After their mother’s death, two estranged half-sisters argue over what to do with a book of stamps that may contain a philatelist’s dream: a unique misprint from the titular island. Enter three conniving collectors, each willing to do anything——even double-cross the others (yes, there are echoes of Mamet’s American Buffalo)——and the plot boils over with intrigue. Francis Gercke directs.

IN THE ’90S, ANNIE WEISMAN was a self-professed “theater geek” at Torrey Pines High School. She won the California Young Playwrights Contest in 1992 and joined the list of talented writers who have been nurtured over the years by Deborah Salzer and her Playwrights Project. In 2001, Weisman had world premieres of two of her plays, at Costa Mesa’s South Coast Repertory Theatre and La Jolla Playhouse.

The former was Hold Please, a women-in-the-workplace spoof later produced at the Old Globe. The latter was Be Aggressive, the satirically comic tale of a high school cheerleader trying to find her way in life amid the tarnished-golden lifestyle of Southern California. Both plays went on to productions around the nation, winning praise for Weisman and her particular talent for note-perfect dialogue. Now Aggressive is coming back, offered by Carlsbad’s New Village Arts April 4-26. The match of writer and company looks propitious because the NVA troupe excels at ensemble works, and the director is Kristianne Kurner, who’s especially adept at mining the nuggets in scripts rich in conversation.

Two other intriguing offerings are coming from our impressive smaller companies. The North Coast Rep will stage the local premiere of Rabbit Hole (April 4 - 26), David Lindsay-Abaire’s 2007 Pulitzer Prize winner centering on a couple dealing with a devastating loss. And the Ion and Moxie companies will team for Labyrinth of Desire (April 8-May 23), a modern adaptation by Caridad Svitch of a 17th century Lope de Vega comedy about a jilted woman seeking to recapture her fiancé. Labyrinth had a short 2006 run at UCSD.

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