"I can’t be the only Sondheim nerd sick of respectful, minimalist approaches. Give us full orchestras, monumental design, directors eager to wrestle with convention; scale up, you cowards. Don’t relegate the full sonic and dramatic force of the past century’s greatest musicals to the concert hall or opera house. Or if you’re going to do it in a small venue like CSC, freak the hell out of us. No, those who long for an Assassins to disrupt our peace will have to wait until the next civic atrocity. Take discomfort in the fact that this ominous triumph will always wait for us in the dark, finger on the trigger."
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While the actors give excellent performances, the revival lacks emotion and heart which is strange considering the number of characters who die or who are wounded in the course of the show. It is as though they (and we) are numbed by so much depiction of killing.
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"Assassins is a particular piece. There is only one prop common to all of the characters: a gun. It is their strength, their sword, their sword arm for that matter. Because they welcome it, and everything for which is stands, they can and will murder – or at least try. But murder, in this case is not a blip on the monitor."
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"The production lacks the power to unsettle despite a fine cast of killers and wannabes who changed, or at least made, history gunning for presidents."
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"Assassins remains fascinating...The most discomfiting thing about watching Assassins now is the extent to which the isolated mindsets whose dots the musical connects through 120 years of U.S. history have cohered into movements since the show was written. “The country is not what it was,” sings Booth somberly, and many people now would agree. The other national anthem, as the song predicts, is getting louder every year."
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"5 stars!...Rifles and revolvers get plenty of play. That said, missing this show would be a shame — if you can snag a ticket. Set to open 19 months ago but delayed by the pandemic, director and designer John Doyle’s take on this darkly humorous slice of history is tight, insightful, and impeccably performed. It aims, fires, and hits the mark."
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"Director John Doyle’s electrifying staging of “Assassins,” Stephen Sondheim’s macabre masterpiece about our national infatuation with fame and our appetite for violence, is a revival to die for — figuratively, of course."
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"Are the protesters who violently stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6 the contemporary descendants of the men and women who assassinated and attempted to assassinate the Presidents of the United States? This is the disturbing query posed at the end of Classic Stage Company’s eagerly-anticipated Off-Broadway revival of Stephen Sondheim and John Weidman’s one-of-a-kind 1990 musical “Assassins,” a nonlinear, critical-minded, and darkly comic examination of American assassins and would-be assassins."
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