The spotlight is on our star-studded cast for the Great Adventure Gala on June 8th! You won’t want to miss seeing all your favorite Landmark performers take the stage in this unforgettable night of music and celebration. From past favorites to sneak peeks of our upcoming productions, this is a night of entertainment you won’t want to miss! Tickets On Sale Now
Landmark Performers
It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to hear all these incredible performers on stage at the same time. Don’t miss this evening!
Allie Hyman Brooke Wittenmeier Charlie Carlos Corey Shaw David Perez Douglas Emslie Emily Morgan Evelyn Carter Genie Hossain Heather Chambers Jay Dysart Jeff Lowe Jennifer Walquist Jocelyn Thalia Sanchez Joey Krumbein Jordi Kligman Kenneth Spears Lacey Spence Lauren McGunigale Lily Penner Lisa Bode Heard Maddie Levy Mark Waters Martha Duncan Megan O’Toole Phineas Wilder Ray Hedgpeth Richard J. Martinez Richard Muhammad Sarah Shimanek Yves Dysart
Landmark is excited to announce our Summer Gala Celebration “The Great Adventure” on Saturday June 8th, at First Congregational Church of Long Beach with a champagne and light hors d’oeuvres and dessert reception starting at 7:00 pm and concert at 8:00 pm. This event will feature a cavalcade of 30 plus Landmark performers with live music accompanying the artists as we speak and sing to our next GREAT Adventure!! Tickets are $50 per person and are on sale now. We hope to see you there!!!
Reception – 7pm
The evening of celebration begins with a champagne reception in the beautiful courtyard and grounds of the magnificent First Congregational Church of Long Beach. Light hors d’oeuvres will be followed by dessert as we toast to the coming adventure. A surprise performance may arise, so come early and enjoy the pre-show revelry.
Concert & Entertainment – 8pm
Landmark performers will be accompanied by live music as we sing our way through pieces from Landmark shows of the past and introduce you to material in our future! With over 30 performers, we are sure to fill the remarkable sanctuary of First Congregational with heartfelt song and joyous energy.
Big Announcements!
We have exciting news to share about what’s ahead and can’t wait to unveil our upcoming plans at the Gala! Please join us in celebrating the Great Adventure that lies ahead!
Live Auction
Throughout the evening, there will be fabulous opportunities for entertainment, dinners, cruises, and more! Come prepared to bid on these extraordinary items and support Landmark’s mission as you nab some one-of-a-kind deals!
Landmark Performers to be announced
It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to hear all these incredible performers on stage at the same time. Don’t miss this evening. Full cast list will be posted soon on the event page. Stay tuned!
The largest nation-wide day of giving is here. Everyone at Landmark appreciates your consideration on this day of giving as we plan out our next slate of shows – every little bit helps us to dream big!
Six long Beach arts organizations combine to present a musical commemoration of the 25th Anniversary of the Matthew Shepard story.
Landmark is extremely proud to collaborate with six other exceptional arts organizations from Long Beach to bring our very own Curtis Heard’s score to life in a one-night only event.
Imagine the Matthew Shepard story told through more than just human eyes with the poetic imagination of Lesléa Newman‘s book October Mourning: A Song for Matthew Shepard, brought to life by a stunning score from local Long Beach composer Curtis Heard. Join the South Coast Chorale, in collaboration with the First Congregational Church Sanctuary Choir, Landmark Theatre Company, Musique Sur La Mer Orchestra, Long Beach Youth Chorus, and members of the Wilson High School Choir as we share the unheard voices of the fence, the deer, the stars, and more in this musical narrative that, 25 years later, still resonates far beyond the LGBTQ+ community.
A new review from Stage and Cinema highlights the vocal talent of the ensemble of Assassins and applauds Landmark for the “braveness” in realizing the challenges that the show puts forth.
First, gratitude to the show’s director and choreographer Megan O’Toole for taking on the challenge. Kudos to Curtis Heard and his brilliant music direction and orchestra. And a bigger hand to the cast. The Long Beach community certainly has a talented pool of singers, and this vocally superb cast sings the hell out of the score.
– Stage and Cinema
I was especially impressed with Lisa Bode Heard (Housewife, Ensemble) who shines like a beacon in “Something Just Broke,” epitomizing a vocal quality perfectly suited to many Sondheim scores.
– Stage and Cinema
When Charlie Carlos excitedly sang “How I Saved Roosevelt,” capturing with his very well-trained voice the angst and frustration … of the stomach-ailed Zangara
“Unworthy of Your Love,” the demented devotional duet to Jodie Foster and Charles Manson had Mark Waters as John Hinckley and Maddie Levy as “Squeaky” Fromme sounding terrific together — the result was lovely with Levy’s exceptionally strong pop sound (her “Squeaky” characterization was sharp and contemporary instead of spacy and ’70s)
Owen Lovejoy as Leon Czolgosz evoked the sad desperation of the factory laboring immigrant with terrific vocals in “The Gun Song.”
– Stage and Cinema
I applaud Landmark for its braveness in realizing Assassins because it is a challenge both artistically and politically.
Landmark Theatre Company brings the Tony-award-winning musical to life with a stellar cast, dynamic set design and a full theater orchestra
– Long Beach Post
Musicals by Stephen Sondheim generally need no introduction, but “Assassins” is a somewhat obscure production overshadowed by other very prominent musicals of his (“Sweeney Todd,” for example), so here’s the gist: Set in an all-American psychedelic-looking carnival house, audiences explore the lives of nine men and women who either killed (or tried to kill) one of the presidents of the United States. It’s a dark comedy that aims to undress a sinister side of the American dream and has, to much success, captivated audiences since its first Broadway production in 2004.
From the first notes of Assassins, it was clear that the small orchestra (coming to us from the basement, we were told pre-show) was on-point from horns to tambourine, and the cast could sing…
– Greggory Moore, Random Lengths News
You need a good cast to pull that off. No problem here. Jay Dysart is strong throughout and a tour de force in the play’s pivotal scene. Phineas Wilder make us unsure whether we should laugh or cry at his manic Charles Guiteau. And Maddie Levy and Emily Morgan as “Squeaky” Fromme and Sara Jane Moore —who unsuccessfully attempted to kill President Gerald Ford barely two weeks apart — have a lovely comedic chemistry.
Levy excels on the vocal front, too, especially on “Unworthy of Your Love”, a clever duet between Fromme and Hinckley (Mark Waters, doing yeoman’s work in one of the less flashy roles). As Leon Czogosz, Owen Lovejoy features prominently in the show’s best consecutive pair of songs. And as the unnamed Balladeer, Bobby Brannon is an obvious standout. Although The Balladeer is not a well-written character — central to the narrative for a while despite having no contextual tie-in, then simply disappearing from the play’s universe — Brannon lights up the stage with their smooth presence and easy vocal command.
– Greggory Moore, Random Lengths News
Director/choreographer Megan O’Toole has made a stage that ought to be way too small for a show of this scope serve, even if just barely, blocking the proceedings to near perfection.
– Greggory Moore, Random Lengths News
Now that I’ve discovered Long Beach Landmark Theatre Company, I hope they’ll continue to take on serious work like Assassins, as opposed to tacking toward liter, populist fare. They’re up to the challenge, and we’re all better off when our entertainment is this thoughtful and thought-provoking.
In the presentation of “Assassins” that opened this past Friday night at the Long Beach Landmark Theatre, it is the comedy that works best. Director Megan O’Toole has toned down the violent factor substantially with the replacement of the usual “guns” used in the show with items like mallets and juggling balls for bullets. The beginning scenes are portrayed instead with killers toting rubber mallets, centered around a neon-lit, high striker, ring-the-bell hammer game.
Some of the segments of the show are hilarious indeed. Emily Morgan, lighter than air, and a witchy Maddie Levy make a very animated sociopathic Lucy-and-Ethel pair as Sara Jane Moore and Lynette Fromme, would-be killers of Gerald R. Ford. When Moore’s make-shift “gun” fails to discharge, she thinks fast and throws the balls at him instead.
But there is no mistaking the show’s serious intentions and its confidence in pursuing them.
The ensemble cast is vocally exceptional, with especially thrilling contributions from Jay Dysart (“Texas School Book Depository”) as Booth, Owen Lovejoy (“The Ballad of Czolgosz”) as Czolgosz, Corey Shaw (“America”) as Samuel Byck, young Sammy Schwarz (“I Shot My Dog”) as the Boy, and Bobby Brannon (“The Ballad of Booth”) as the Balladeer.
– Chris Daniels, The Show Report
And Director O’Toole has an off-center, love-obsessed Hinckley (Mark Waters) singing a beautiful folk-rock ballad called “Unworthy of Your Love” to a heedless Jodie Foster; and then when it becomes a duet with Ms. Fromme (known as Squeaky) charmingly singing to a Charles Manson, the squirmy, tragic pathos in the air becomes weighty.
Still, when Giuseppe Zangara (Charlie Carlos), in his inchoate crime against Franklin D. Roosevelt, calls himself an “American nothing,” or when the nine assassins sing together about “another national anthem” that applies to the likes of them, you may feel, as I did, the rumblings of our unsettled country in your bones. “Assassins” is the report of that unsettlement, as well as the bang.
– Chris Daniels, The Show Report
Lucas Dysart excels as Lee Harvey Oswald, proving a lynchpin of modern history, the production’s most harrowing and effective final scene.
We’ve reached the end of our series about the assassins of Assassins and our production opens this weekend. All the profiles are online for you to read, and we’ve sprinkled in details relevant to the show throughout each one.
Lee Harvey Oswald
Assassinated President John F. Kennedy
Lee Harvey Oswald was a US Marine, a one-time defector to the Soviet Union, and the assassin of President John F. Kennedy.
As a child, Oswald’s troubled relationship with his mother and other family members led him to act out socially and in school. He was evaluated by psychiatrists throughout his childhood who found him to be withdrawn and secretive. As a teenager he became enamored with socialist literature before joining the US Marines. He was court-marshaled twice for insubordination and the misuse of firearms while in the military.
After leaving the military to care for his ailing mother, Oswald made a shocking move. He travelled to the Soviet Union where he attempted to become a citizen and live in the rival superpower nation. Oswald did not enjoy Soviet life, and soon made a return to America after getting married to a Russian woman.
After his resettlement in the US, Oswald’s life became populated with strange characters and coincidences that have fueled decades of speculation. Did the FBI cultivate him as an asset and encourage his pro-Cuba leafleting activities to entrap communists? Did the CIA assign him a handler to keep tabs on an unstable, one-time defector?
Oswald’s eccentricities and political obsessions continued. During this time, he attempted to assassinate a retired Major General- his unsuccessful attempt only uncovered after he was investigated for Kennedy’s murder.
Killing Kennedy
On November 22nd, Lee Harvey Oswald fired three shots from the 6th floor of the Texas School Book Depository, down onto Dallas’s Dealey Plaza, killing President Kennedy. He had secured a job in the building a month earlier and used the vantage point afforded by the higher floor to scope out his target. He evaded capture by authorities for a little over an hour before he was tracked down and arrested inside of a movie theatre. Encountering a group of reporters after his arrest, he yelled that he was a “patsy”.
The nation reacted to news of President Kennedy’s death with complete shock. This public and grisly assassination darkened a hopeful time in American life that the young, handsome President had symbolized. Two days after the assassination, Oswald was being walked to an armored van by police, intending to transfer him from city jail to county jail. Jack Ruby, a nightclub owner shot him in anger, killing Oswald and preventing him from ever testifying in court.
Legacy of a Tragedy
Despite the conclusions of the Warren Commission, and investigations by the FBI and Dallas Police, polls still show that most Americans still do not believe the official story of the Kennedy Assassination. Whether their alternate theories contain speculation about US Intelligence, multiple assassins, mobsters or magic bullets, the lack of clarity around Oswald’s motives still confounds.
If you want to get a closer look at Oswald’s desires and demons, and see what was possibly on his mind, come see Assassins at Landmark!
Further Reading
A book written by a fellow Marine, featuring a character heavily based on Oswald. The book was written before the assassination. The Idle Warriors at Amazon
Lucas returns to the stage at Landmark as Lee Harvey Oswald in Landmark’s production of Assassins. Audiences have seen Lucas as a featured ensemble member in Rent and Hunchback of Notre Dame.
Landmark’s upcoming production of Assassins has been featured in the Beachcomber with special attention given to the “Season of Sondheim” happening in Southern California.
Landmark Theater will extend the focus on Sondheim throughout the LA area this spring by bringing this powerful Sondheim work to Long Beach, opening April 28. Inside the frame of an all-American, yet sinister, carnival, “Assassins” illuminates the stories of several historical figures who attempted (successfully or not) to assassinate American Presidents.
