Assassins opens with two conflicting images at once – a murky, shadowy, sinister, shooting gallery set against the colorful and musical spectacle of carnival fairgrounds, or put another way, the colorful, exciting, child-like experience of the carnival set against the underbelly of the circus – the fairgrounds once the show is over, once the illusion has been stripped away. This antinomy served as a helpful conceptual frame for many other opposing forces and images suggested by the show: the assassins vs. us; the American political ideal vs. the struggle of the working class; the right to pursue happiness against the right to be happy; opportunity against deprivation; the immigrant vs. the native citizen; and the illusion of theater practice.

This is a character-driven musical in which discontinuity of comfort is critical, and manifested in several ways: the immediacy and access of the audience to the performer as an essential performative element, realized through the integration of a turntable and on-stage seating; the distinction between character and performer is often blurred during the musical numbers; and the theatre reveals all of itself and provides no illusion of presentation. The design therefore ultimately reflects the spirit of the carnival when it is through – dirty, unkempt, ambivalent, unresolved.

When asked about the state of contemporary musical theater in 2008 Sondheim replied, “What works now are musicals that are easy to take; audiences don’t want to be challenged.”