s ability to write against audience expectations of the subject: for Into The Woods (1987), he gave such familiar nursery figures as Cinderella and Red Riding Hood complex extended numbers; for the eponymous anti-heroes of Assassins (1990), he wrote some of his most affecting, straightforward music, reaching back beyond Berlin to barbershop and Stephen Foster, and almost to our own time with an ironic parody of the Carpenters. Not everyone feels comfortable watching Lee Harvey Oswald singing along with John Wilkes Booth, but, in stretching the possibilities of the musical, Sondheim is seeking to prove that the form has just as wide a range as the straight play. And for that we should all be grateful....
