The Right to Be Happy

How do misfits and outsiders get into the history books? They assassinate the president, and live forever on the Broadway stage. I saw Stephen Sondheim's Assassins last night. Who would've thought that a musical based on the life stories of nine would-be presidential assassins could be so compelling? The difficulty for Sondheim is to balance his wit and humor without being flip or casual about the deaths of four presidents. The production accents the carnival funhouse of American history and of course that's where Sondheim's clever turn-of-phrases and surprising lyrical ideas really shine (and you can see why Magnetic Fields...