SOURCE: A review of Assassins, in New Republic, Vol. 204, No. 11, March 18, 1991, pp. 34–35.

In the following negative review of Assassins, Brustein focuses on the lack of connection between the content of the show and the musical genre, Sondheim's lack of insight, and the show’s failed attempts at irony.

Assassins is the latest work of another auspicious talent, Stephen Sondheim, who wrote the music and lyrics to a book by John Weidman. In its present incarnation at Playwrights Horizons, it is a singularly bizarre performance. Sondheim has never been known for timidity in choosing material for musicals. Sweeney Todd, after all, was about a barber who sold off the dismembered parts of his murdered victims for consumption at dining room tables. With Assassins, however, he has chosen to memorialize tunefully the careers of that coterie of killers who aimed a variety of lethal weapons at the hides of American...