Continuing my Downer Days at the Theater, I saw ASSASSINS this afternoon. The above is from one of the songs, part of a verse that goes:

Everybody's got the right to some sunshine
Not the sun but maybe one of its beams
Rich man, poor man, black or white,
Pick your apple, take a bite,
Everybody's got a right to their dreams.

A lovely sentiment. It's sung by the assembled men and women who tried, whether they succeeded or failed, to assassinate various US presidents. John Wilkes Booth, Leon Czolgosz, Squeaky Fromme, Lee Harvey Oswald, five more. I'm a big Sondheim fan (You have to love a man who writes, "We'd have been left/bereft/of FDR.") and I've wanted to see this show for many years, since I heard the John Wilkes Booth song in a concert and it blew me away. The show is so complicated in structure as to be disorienting and surreal, though by the end I understood why it was set up that way. It's not cheerful, but it's a knockout. I'm not sure, though, why some reviewers have called it the perfect post-9/11 musical. In story it doesn't reflect what's going on in the country now, though I suppose you could read a broad political allegory into the idea of people finding a scapegoat to blame for their personal demons and then trying to eliminate it (the motive of some of the assassins) and/or a social allegory (to explain, say, reality TV) in people wanting fame so badly they'd do anything for it. Unless the connection is really about mood. This show, with its desperation, despair, and complete disconnect among the assassins between what they wanted and what their acts were going to get them, sure fit mine.