Assassins: Two Days in America
Style, steel, and Stephen Sondheim
Tuesday, November 24, 2015.
It is a crisp, cold afternoon in Washington, D.C. In the East Room of the White House, President Barack Obama will today award the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor, to seventeen distinguished Americans. Among today’s honorees are Barbara Streisand, Steven Spielberg, Itzhak Perlman, James Taylor, Emilio and Gloria Estefan, and one Stephen Joshua Sondheim.
As President Obama will say in his introductory remarks, “Even by the standards of Medal of Freedom recipients, this is a class act.”
It is telling that Sondheim counts among this cohort both former and future collaborators. Three decades prior, Streisand convinced him to pen new lyrics to “Putting It Together” and “Send in the Clowns” for The Broadway Album. And a little over six years after this day, the Spielberg-directed West Side Story will receive seven Academy Award nominations and widespread critical acclaim.
“We’re bringing back style to the White House,” sing Merrily We Roll Along’s central trio, impersonating the Kennedys as they perform their musical revue, “Bobby and Jackie and Jack.” It seems the 44th president is following in the footsteps of the 35th.
“The Shining City, Lee. It shines so bright you have to shade your eyes.” So says John Weidman’s imagined John Wilkes Booth to Lee Harvey Oswald, assassin to assassin. And on this cold November afternoon at the White House, America does seem to shine particularly brightly.
Alongside those from the creative arts, the nation is honoring civil rights activists, a NASA mathematician, two baseball Hall of Famers, and assorted public servants, all presided over by that self-described “skinny kid with a funny name” who went on to become the most powerful man on earth. This is star-studded, star-spangled America, and Sondheim is at its heart.
Ah, but underneath…
In recent essays on Assassins, we have explored the show’s opening, and “How I Saved Roosevelt.” In both of these pieces, we have considered the idea of there being two Americas, as proposed by Weidman’s Booth to Lee Harvey Oswald. The first America—that Shining City of hope and opportunity—was certainly on full display at the White House, as the class of 2015 received their commendations.
But Sondheim, throughout his career, gave such eloquent voice to the second America too, the America of misfits, outsiders, and “quiet desperation.” This is, of course, apparent not just in Assassins, but across his whole body of work—but that is beyond the scope of this particular essay. As we continue our journey through Assassins, we can explore this notion in more detail.