Little Shop of Productions: The Just Assassins
Theatre Tulsa Studios
January 17, 2026
While we’re only a few weeks into 2026, Little Shop of Productions just wrapped a third production in its impressive first season: Albert Camus’ 1949 play The Just Assassins. The story is based on the real-life assassination of Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich, which took place in Russia just after the turn of the 20th century, back when the country was still ruled by Tsars.
A more literal translation of the title would be “The Just” or “The Righteous,” a nod at the main subject of conflict in this work. All five members of the play’s revolutionary squad have given their life to the cause of the Socialist Revolutionary party with the fervent desire to bring justice to Russia, but they all have different ideas of what that looks like in practice.
For some theatregoers, the script might have felt like an extensive overexamination of philosophical questions: When is violence justified? How much are you willing to sacrifice for a cause or an idea? Does ignorance absolve you? Does the end always justify the means? And is there a place for love, for life, in times of terror? But for someone like me, who constructs philosophical debates in my head so I don’t get in trouble in the comment section, it was kind of cathartic to see the back-and-forth externalized, and I was intrigued to see Camus’ answer to each of these questions.
The show’s set helped ground me. The production design of The Just Assassins marked a bold 180-degree swing for Little Shop, with director Anna Seat stripping the show of period specificity and leaning into expressionism to craft a poignant, universal metaphor.
Constructed so that audience members sat on two opposing ends of the stage, the set was almost abstract. Large blocky platforms of different heights and widths created multiple levels. Two small walls, one with a window, were placed on the sides of the stage that didn’t have audience members. All set pieces were coated in white with stark, jagged black cracks, alluding to the immense pressure the group feels to pull off the assassination and how that pressure could be affecting their mental state.