Last night, for 4th of July, we saw the Steven Sondheim musical Assassins. I loved it! While it was a community theater with a very small production budget, and thus sort of a crappy set, there was no masking Sondheim's catchy songs. And the charisma of John Wilkes Booth. (I *heart* him. As a character in a musical that is. In the Broadway rivial in 2004 the actor who played him won a Tony.) And the actor who played Leon Czolgosz was fantastic. Made me want to learn more about him and Emma Goldman and all that. And I learned a little about assassination history in general. I knew nothing about assissination attempts on FDR and Nixon, and very little about the attempt by Squeaky Fromme on Ford. And being that it was such a small theater, by sitting in the second row we were making eye contact with all the assassins all night long. It was a little nervy, especially when they were pointing guns into the audience. But I liked feeling so close to the actors. By being so actually close to them.
After the show the musical director came on stage and asked the audience to stand up and join the cast in singing "America the Beautiful" (because we all chose to spend our 4th of July night watching a musical about U.S. presidential assassins). I couldn't stop giggling throughout the song and John Wilkes Booth kept looking at me.
(More info from wikipedia.)
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