A few weeks ago, while some people who want to be the next president of the United States were shouting at each other on TV, a group of presidential assassins gathered in a small rehearsal room, exchanging notes about their victims. An actor playing Sam Byck, who attempted to kill Richard Nixon in 1974, expressed his frustration that elections never seem to solve anything. “The Democrat says he’ll fix everything—the Republicans fucked up. The Republican says he’ll fix everything—the Democrats fucked up,” he said, his voice rising. “Who do we believe? What do we do?”
He paused. “We do the only thing we can do.” He went placid. “We kill the president.”
A woman nearby, another actor, closed her eyes. Maybe she was remembering where she was on November 22, 1963, the day John F. Kennedy was assassinated. Or maybe she was thinking about how she’ll vote on November 8, 2016.
This was the first read through of Assassins, the Stephen Sondheim musical running through May 8 at ACT Theatre, produced in partnership with 5th Avenue Theatre. In Assassins, everyone from John Wilkes Booth to John Hinckley Jr. gets a chance to explain themselves: Some are driven by insanity, some by politics, some by a desire to be remembered. Their motives and circumstances vary, but their common bond is that they all grasped for power by taking shots at some of the most powerful men on earth…
