I found out last week that Stephen Sondheim's Assassins was scheduled to close today, so my brother went and got us tickets for tonight's final performance. It was brilliant. I was blown away. I don't even want to think how it was staged back in 1991 when its first incarnation got panned by the critics and didn't even get my curiosity. I remember feeling that it was a minor Sondheim with a dry, bland subject matter - a black and white musical, perhaps, where musicals need to be in color. Odd though that most of the score is the same, and the score is as strong as any Sondheim.

They re-worked the concept, satirically framing the stories of the presidential assassins in a carnival shooting gallery, and they added better continuity elements to lead from one scene to another. But aside from the strong score and great conceptualization, I think what was most compelling was that it was really challenging. The first assassin probed is John Wilkes Booth, and he is made out to sound sane, reasonable, passionate, and . . . a dissenter. OK, we don't like the killing of the emanci-motherfucking-pator of the slaves thing, that goes beyond dissent, but there's room in this democracy for everyone's views, right? And then I think how I'm not too happy with Bush's views and would liked them squashed like a bug, and ergo the challenge. Booth's dissenting view is safely in the past with history written, and it's certainly not one I would agree with if I were living in that time period (pro-slave, Confederate South, fuck that shit, but here's someone willing to kill for that view).

There is a good deal of humor in the show, and the crazies are made out to be crazies, although that's sometimes relative, too. The two female assassins who plotted to kill Gerald Ford were loopy and flaky and might have been people I hung out with in the Bay Area, who knows? Aside from incredible performances all around, other interesting points include the juxtaposition of Hinckley, who was obsessed with Jodie Foster, and "Squeaky" Fromme, who was obsessed with Charles Manson, and having them sing a duet, and the bookending of John Wilkes Booth as the first story, and Lee Harvey Oswald as the last.

I want to say that without both Booth and Oswald, there would be no story here, no musical. Both were necessary to make the subject of presidential assassins compelling. And Sondheim hammers that home with all of the assassins showing up at the Dallas book depository to egg on an unwilling Oswald, pleading that not only will it lead to his own immortality, but also to theirs. Booth points out that when Hinckley's room is searched after his attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan, they found every book ever written about him (I thought they should have pulled a "Back to the Future", and when Booth mentions that Hinckley shoots Ronald Reagan, Oswald should have said, "Ronald Reagan? The actor?!"). Fascinating stuff anyways.

I don't know if it was because this was the last scheduled performance or because it was a flawless performance, but I have never seen a Broadway audience get up on its feet for a standing ovation so quickly at the end of a show. It was a brilliant, ingenious show. You'd think that there would be more hubbub, at least a mention, at a show's closing. Sondheim showing up to take a few bows, champagne being cracked open at close curtain. Something, right?