Off-Broadway 1990
Assassins (1990)
Book: John Weidman
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In short: The provocative show Assassins is a musical journey through time, focusing on nine historical figures who attempted or succeeded in assassinating American presidents. This intense, funny, and tragic show sheds light on the limits and darker sides of the “American Dream.”
Be prepared for a really brilliant, complicated piece of theatre, that’s going to ask questions that you will probably be thinking of
anika chapin (artistic director, dramaturg)
for the rest of your life.
Overview Assassins - background and excerpts
In 1990, rather than building on the commercial success of Into the Woods , Sondheim opted for another bold and challenging project: Assassins. This provocative musical centers on the stories of individuals who attempted—or succeeded—in assassinating American presidents. With its unique and controversial premise, it is often performed in intimate productions and has only had one Broadway run, in 2004, which won five Tony Awards. Sondheim considered Assassins the closest any of his shows came to meeting his original hopes and expectations, thanks in large part to John Weidman’s contribution.
Plot and Themes
The musical explores the lives and motivations of nine historical figures who targeted U.S. presidents. The musical examines their psychology and personal grievances, revealing a recurring pattern: these are individuals who feel unheard, disconnected, and betrayed by the promise of the “American Dream.”
By the end of the show, these historical “monsters” are portrayed as complex, flawed humans whose actions, while horrifying, are made disturbingly understandable—though never excused. The tone shifts constantly, blending humor, tragedy, and intensity, making for an unsettling journey. This discomfort is especially sharp for American audiences, as the show delves into the collective trauma of presidential assassinations, gun violence, and the darker undercurrents of the American Dream.
Music and Lyrics
The score traverses the eras in which the assassinations took place, with the “Balladeer” narrating these histories in the style of folk songs from the respective periods. Each character is given a unique musical voice, reflecting their personality and motivations: the upbeat optimism of Charles Guiteau, the menacing fervor of John Wilkes Booth, and the frenzied desperation of Giuseppe Zangara. Sondheim also juxtaposes the Balladeer, representing the ideals of the American Dream and societal norms, with the assassins, whose perspectives gradually take over the narrative.
The lyrics often incorporate historical accuracy, with lines built around quotes from the real figures. Examples include Booth’s lament, “The country is not what it was,” Guiteau’s “I’m going to the Lordy,” and Zangara’s telling remark on the electric chair, “Why are there no photographers?”
The show’s period-specific musical styles and dense themes make Assassins less immediately accessible than Sondheim’s other works, and its songs are rarely performed outside the context of the musical.
There’s another national anthem, folks,
for those
who never win…
While Lincoln, who got mixed reviews,
because of you, John, now gets only raves.
Charlie said, “Hell,
if I am guilty,
then God is as well.”
But God was acquitted
and Charlie committed
until he should hang.
Still, he sang.
Free country! […]
Means the right to expect
that you’ll have an effect,
that you’re gonna connect.
Nothing has
really ended.
Only just been suspended.
Reception
The initial reception during its 1990 Off-Broadway run was lukewarm to negative. However, the musical gained significant recognition in 2004 when it finally made its Broadway debut, winning five Tony Awards, including Best Revival of a Musical. Assassins has enjoyed periodic revivals, though often on smaller scales, such as the 2021 Off-Broadway production and the 2014 Off-West End revival.
Video excerpts (in show's order)
- The musical opens and closes with versions of "Everybody’s got the right [to be happy]”. This reinterpretation of the American Dream—from “the right to the pursuit of happiness,” as written in the Declaration of Independence, to a right to happiness—sets the tone for the assassins’ perspective. The excerpt included here features the closing number, performed during the 2004 Tony Awards.
- The first assassin introduced in depth is John Wilkes Booth. After assassinating Lincoln, the Balladeer narrates Booth’s story in “The ballad of Booth” only for Booth to interject and challenge the narrative.
- In “Unworthy of your love” written in the style of a 1970s pop ballad, highlights John Hinckley’s obsessive infatuation with Jodie Foster, which drove him to attempt the assassination of Ronald Reagan. Simultaneously, Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme sings the same song with even darker lyrics, directed at Charles Manson, for whom she harbored a twisted devotion.
- “The ballad of Guiteau” dramatizes the final moments of Charles Guiteau, the assassin of President Garfield, incorporating text from his real-life speech just before his execution.
- “Something just broke” was added for the 1992 London production and addresses the reactions of everyday citizens to the various assassinations. While some critics argue that the song does the emotional work for the audience and breaks the show’s claustrophobic tension, Sondheim viewed it as a critical addition, providing an essential reflection of the outside world.
Stephen Sondheim about Assassins
“I’ve often been asked to name my favorite show among the ones I’ve written music and lyrics for and, like most authors, my reply has been the standard one: I have different favorites, each for a different reason. But if I were asked to name the show that comes the closest to my expectations for it, the answer would be Assassins. Certainly, John [Weidman, red.]’s book does.
As to my own contribution, in every show I’ve written there are things in the score I wish I could have fixed at the time but didn’t know how to, or in hindsight don’t have the patience to return to. Assassins has only one moment I’d like to improve (the brief passage I call “Family,” which reeks of the academic—that is, it resounds with the voice of the songwriter rather than the characters). Otherwise, as far as I’m concerned, the show is perfect. Immodest that may sound, but I’m ready to argue it with anybody.”
More Assassins: audio and video
Go to More Sondheim for our Sondheim Archives.
Assassins in the Netherlands
Most recent large production
OFF-BROADWAY
Opening: August 1, 2003, Parade Festival, Martin Luther Kingpark, Amsterdam
Cast: Bas Groenenberg (Balladeer), Peter Reijn (Booth), Karin van As (Fromme), Ara Halici (Czolgosz), Jeroen van Wijngaarden (Zangara), Burt Lamaker (Guiteau), Erik Plageman (Hinckley), and others.
Translation: Daniël Cohen
Director: Daniël Cohen
Reviews of Assassins
Original off-Broadway production (1990)
“In Assassins, a daring work even by his lights, Mr. Sondheim and his collaborator, the writer John Weidman, say the unthinkable, though they sometimes do so in a deceptively peppy musical-comedy tone. Without exactly asking that the audience sympathize with some of the nation’s most notorious criminals, this show insists on reclaiming them as products, however defective, of the same values and traditions as the men they tried to murder. To Mr. Sondheim, the dreams of Presidential assassins seem not so much different from those empty all-American dreams of stardom he enshrined in Gypsy: these killers want to grab headlines, get the girl, or see their names in lights. […]
One need not agree with Mr. Sondheim’s cynical view of history and humanity to feel that Assassins has the potential to be an extraordinarily original piece of theater. In its Off Broadway premiere, unfortunately, that potential is unfulfilled. [….]
Mr. Sondheim’s better numbers in Assassins do aspire to the highest standard and not infrequently meet it. As the show as a whole attempts to rewrite American history, so the composer audaciously attempts to rewrite the history of American music. This is an anti-musical about anti-heroes. Every song upends a traditional native form: folk music, spirituals and John Philip Sousa are all rethought along with Broadway idioms and the official national musical oratory of Irving Berlin and Francis Scott Key. […]
Brilliant as these songs can be individually, they never cohere into a fully realized score that builds in cumulative effect the way most of the later Sondheim scores do. […]
But Mr. Sondheim has real guts. He isn’t ashamed to identify with his assassins to the extreme point where he will wave a gun in a crowded theater, artistically speaking, if that’s what is needed to hit the target of American complacency. While that target is a valuable one, especially at this historical moment, Assassins will have to fire with sharper aim and fewer blanks if it is to shoot to kill. ” – Frank Rich, The New York Times (1991)
Broadway (2004)
“Joe Mantello’s flawless production makes your skin crawl even as it seduces you — and should redeem a prime place for this disquieting musical in the canon of the American theater’s reigning master of the form. Sondheim has always been an artist concerned more with clouds than silver linings. While most Broadway musicals are designed to disseminate the intoxicating feeling of dreams coming true, Sondheim prefers to explore the long moment after, when the prize so enthusiastically pursued turns out to be a shoddy piece of goods. Assassins is his most scabrous commentary yet on the poisoned chalice of romantic illusions. […]
That’s its strength: Rather than a standard musical-comedy score that draws variety from a show’s narrative progression, Sondheim’s writing for Assassins is an artfully conceived, cohesive whole, almost a single piece of music composed of theme and variations. It’s an oratorio that knits together more than a century of American musical styles, from marches and 19th-century folk ballads to ’70s pop, into a single tapestry.” – Charles Isherwood, Variety (2004)
“I can’t imagine that anyone who sees Assassins will have the slightest desire to emulate its characters. But leave it to Mr. Sondheim to identify certain emotional poisons — feelings of dispossession and disillusion, of failure and alienation — as chemicals that exist in small quantities in every human body. Mr. Sondheim magnifies those elements to monstrous proportions, and your being able to recognize them as familiar makes their presence in these looming, distorted forms all the scarier. […]
Mr. Sondheim’s astonishing score takes staples of American folk, pop and ceremonial music and turns them inside out. The sly distortions of familiar musical tropes — whether ”Hail to the Chief” or a barbershop quartet — approximate the skewed ways in which these characters hear everyday melodies. Listening, as sweet notes slide into dissonance, you may feel as if your own brain has slipped off the rails.” – Ben Brantley, The New York Times (2004)
Off-Broadway production (2022)
“The bigger, painfully timely question posed by this new revival (now playing at Classic Stage Company) is: Are we now so jaded as a nation that this modern classic has lost some of its shock value after 30 years? And the answer is: Nope. Between the musical’s powerful content and Doyle’s inventive presentation, Assassins is still a killer show. […]
The sheer cynicism of the opening number that introduces the nine assassins can take your breath away: So much anger in the insidious music, such profound despair in the fevered lyrics! According to the Proprietor (the formidable Eddie Cooper) of the show’s bizarre carnival world, “Everybody’s got the right to be happy / Everybody’s got the right to their dreams.” So far, so good. But the song doesn’t stop there: A free country, it promises us, “means your dreams can come true” — a sentiment too often misconstrued as meaning “your dreams will come true.” That’s the dangerous misinterpretation of the freedom to dream that brings all those angry assassins to the stage — and to life.” – Marilyn Stasio, Variety (2021)
