– Customer review on 03/07/2009

This is the script only for "Assassins", Stephen Sondheim's landmark 1991 musical which has been both loved and despised since its release. The music of this work is undoubtedly stunning: the script is... not quite as good. At times, it is very clever and imaginative. But at other times, it seems like a highschool drama. The story is set in a kind of "God's waiting room" where various historical characters who have tried to assassinate US presidents end up in the same bar. We see various scenes from their lives, in an attempt to both explain and also question the nature of American democracy, and why assassinations occur. Anyway, it is an undeniably interesting play but I don't think it's a work of genius by any standard.