![Everybody's Got the Right2.png](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5f8853202009e31e43603df3/1618594067883-5I8K8VH6GALR3ED33T64/Everybody%27s+Got+the+Right2.png?format=1500w)
“Assassins” is a hard musical to love, but maybe even a harder one to forget.
This show by Stephen Sondheim and John Weidman is built around a rogue’s gallery of infamous Americans who tried, in some cases successfully, to kill the president of the United States. As a description, “audacious” seems far too tame for a musical that searches for the pep in pathological and even makes treason tuneful.
Cognitive dissonance is built into a work that saves some of its prettiest melodies for the most murderous maniacs. Frank Rich, in his review of the 1991 off-Broadway premiere at Playwrights Horizons, called it “an antimusical about antiheroes.” The show was a hit off-Broadway, but it took 13 years for this disturbing vaudeville to make it to Broadway.
Read the full article here.