Song of the Day 4/5: Broadway Cast of “Assassins,” “Everybody’s Got the Right”

Filed in Arts and Entertainment, National by on April 5, 2020

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  1. El Somnambulo says:
    April 5, 2020 at 9:49 am

    Alby features Sondheim. Woo-hoo! Man Bites Dog!

    Assassins is an incredible show with a great score. And, yes, it’s dark.

  2. El Somnambulo says:
    April 5, 2020 at 11:11 am

    From the same production, the chill-inducing ‘Ballad of Booth’, featuring Neil Patrick Harris and Michael Cerveris:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qodGMOPcUyQ

  3. nathan arizona says:
    April 5, 2020 at 12:25 pm

    Glad to help, Alby. There’s a lot of Sondheimness going on for his 90th birthday.

    • El Somnambulo says:
      April 5, 2020 at 12:42 pm

      Yes there is. For all of you shut-ins, and let’s face it, we’re ALL shut-ins now, I highly recommend ‘Best Worst Thing That Ever Could Have Happened’, which traces those involved in the original ‘Merrily We Roll Along’ from its ill-fated Broadway run until now.

      The show was a flop, largely because of the disastrous decision by Hal Prince and Sondheim to cast very young actors in roles that would have them playing characters in their 40’s as well as in their teens. Only Jason Alexander really enjoyed much fame from the original cast, and his hair in this piece is…disturbing. Almost all the actors, many of whom never did anything before or after, were convinced it would be a ‘palpable hit’, and run forever. In this case, ‘forever’ was 16 performances, although the original cast recording deserves to live forever.

      But the show has one of my favorite Sondheim scores, with at least three songs that deserve to be standards, and it has been reworked successfully, and staged in theatres everywhere. We saw a great revival of it at the Arden Theatre in Philly about a decade ago.

      This documentary has all the poignancy of the plot itself, and concludes with a reunion of the original cast in a concert presentation that is tremendously moving.
      My wife and I caught it on Netflix last week. Sondheim fans and those who have never heard anything he’s done would do well to check it out.

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