Written by orange• October 22, 2026• 1:39 am• Brea, Curtis Theatre, Southgate Productions, Uncategorized

Southgate Productions presents: The Assassin’s have come out to play! – Assassins @ Curtis Theatre – Review

Photo credit: Francis Gacad

Written by Patrick Chavis

Curtis Theatre presents Assassins: The Musical, October 9-18, 2026.

Thoughtful and engaging, this Sondheim classic is elevated by a dynamite cast and inventive use of the play’s backdrop.

Assassins follows a group of attempted and successful assassins from history: John Wilkes Booth (Taras Wybaczynsky Jr.), who, as we all know, at least we should, assassinated Abraham Lincoln; Lee Harvey Oswald (Jaycob Hunter), the alleged shooter of John F. Kennedy. John Hinckley Jr. (Aaron Lipp), the man who shot Ronald Reagan over an intense infatuation with Jodie Foster, and many more. They all meet up at a magical shooting gallery to sing about their reasoning for why they want to kill the president.

Story:

Sondheim had so many hits in his lifetime. Even his slightly off the beaten path works would be a lesser playwright’s magnum opus. Assassins is one of those pieces. The theatre community knows it well, but it doesn’t have the mainstream appeal of Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street or Into the Woods. Assassins is peculiar, but it may also be Sondheim at his most focused.

The show relies heavily on solo performers who can capture the characters, their presence, and their accents, and, of course, sing. Sondheim’s music can be difficult to sing, especially the more operatic parts. Vocally, Assassins can be a little more forgiving than many of his other musicals.

Reese Chavez (Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme) and Aaron Lipp (John Hinckley Jr.) deliver a performance of “Unworthy of Your Love” that gave me shivers. (The gunfire did, too, but that’s another story.) Chavez’s vocals are as vibrant as her performance as Lynette Fromme, the group’s Manson girl. There’s an intense but controlled energy from Chavez that really works for the character.

While much of the show is prerecorded, it’s a nice touch that Lipp actually plays acoustic guitar along with the tune. Lipp’s lower spoken-sing meshes incredibly well with Chavez’s fuller vocals.

“The Ballad of Czolgosz,” about the titular assassin fighting his way is through the line to his the target, is led by Jaycob Hunter as the Balladeer and features a performance by Spike Pulice as Leon Czologosz. The tune is so peppy and folksy that you almost forget what’s happening on stage. Hunter sings and moves at a sprightly pace in this tune, but it’s not until the transition to Oswald that he really shows his range.

The ballads in this were hitting. Christopher Diem (Charles Guiteau) exceptionally performed “The Ballad of Guiteau.”

Set Design:

Jon Gaw & Jonathan Infante’s set design combined digital and physical structures. The physical structures were often placed in front of a massive video wall of rectangular images. The images were projected and easily visible throughout the performance. They could have stopped there, but they also used the video wall as a shadow silhouette to display the assassins’ undoing, which looked epic!

Genevieve Kauper is hilarious as Sara Jane Moore, particularly in the scene where they miss their shot at killing Gerald Ford. Chavez and Kauper are a bumbling duo of a good time on stage.

This show has plenty of gunfire, so be aware.