This is the only Broadway cast album of this show, because the original 1990 incarnation was produced by Playwrights Horizons and never produced on Broadway, although that cast was recorded.
I have heard bits and pieces of this show before--I have a vague recollection of a video clip of Patrick Cassidy (from the Playwrights production) singing "The Ballad of Booth"--but that was all I knew of the show. Given that musical snippet I was hoping for a show with some pastiche musical styles fitting the eras of the various assassins, and while there is quite a bit of that, there was not enough to keep my ears riveted.
Neil Patrick Harris is the vocal stand-out of this vocally good cast. Besides singing more than anyone as he portrayed both the Balladeer and Lee Harvey Oswald, NPH has the right vocal tone to sing Sondheim's music well. By that I mean he has a lightish, forward-placed voice that can hopscotch around the turns in Sondheim's melodies.
My problem with this show is probably more thematic than musical; I don't find the exploration of the mind of a killer to be interesting. At first I thought the show was exploring how Presidential assassins are really just footnotes to history, but the end of the show with Lee Harvey Oswald and the reprise of the opening "Everybody's Got a Right" were too creepy for that interpretation. Whether you believe guns kill people or people kill people, there are lots of both on display.
This is the first appearance of one of my favorite actresses, though, Becky Ann Baker. I've never seen Ms. Baker live (and don't actually know if she's been in other musicals besides this production), but I loved, Loved, LOVED her in the television series Freaks and Geeks from the late 1990s. The whole series is one of my favs, but I digress...
Music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim
Book by John Weidman
Originally produced in 1990
Opened on Broadway in 2004
This cast: Neil Patrick Harris, Becky Ann Baker, Michael Cerveris, Marc Kudisch, Denis O'Hare, Mario Cantone
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