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Posted By	Discussion Topic: Mario Cantone Loses a Gig
Dan-O	posted on 09-17-2001 @ 2:39 PM
Psychopath Registered: Nov. 00	Before Tuesday, I was very excited because Mario Cantone was about to go into rehearsals for a Broadway musical, Assassins by Stephen Sondheim and John Weidman. This would bring the world of Broadway to the O&A show (moreso than Mario usually does), and what's more, this is a show that the O&A demographic might even go see and enjoy. The show tells the stories, in songs and comic vignettes, of nine Presidential assassins in U.S. history -- the successful ones, Oswald, Booth, Czolgosz (McKinley) and Guiteau (Garfield), and some who shot but missed (John Hinckley), or didn't even get that far. Mario's character, Sam Byck, was a deranged man who recorded and sent stream-of-consciousness tapes to celebrities. His plan? To hijack a plane and crash it into the White House, killing Nixon. In real life, Byck and two officers were killed before the plane even took off. (n.b. I played this part in a college production.) Needless to say, this plot point, along with the subtly subversive tone of the show, which portrays the assassins humorously and sympathetically while condemning their actions, forced the "postponement" (read: cancellation) of the production, which was to open in November. Ironically, when Assassins premiered in December 1990 off-Broadway, the Gulf War and attendant patriotism doomed the show to close quickly. I know this is fairly trivial, but Mario is a friend of the show, and he probably lost a supporting-actor Tony Award nomination (as well as months of paychecks). Don't know if he's coming on O&A today as originally planned, so I wanted to tell y'all the story. More info: Playbill On-Line article ... Synopsis of the show "Art isn't easy"

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