Reviews of 1991 Off-Broadway production:

"Nothing, however, quite prepares you for the disturbing brilliance of Assassins...The score is instantly appealing...a chilling vision of evil reaching out to evil, and dark acts begetting dark acts....Mr. Sondheim and Mr. Weidman have produced a morality play about the forces of good and bad, and then boldly exiled goodness to the wings. No musical in the last decade has dared this much."
-- David Richards, The New York Times

"A genuine original, a show that makes its own rules--then changes them--as it goes along....Weidman has written some of the strongest book scenes a musical has contained in years, and his ability to shift tone and make the audience strangle on its own laughter is extraordinary....one of Sondheim's shortest and cleverest scores, a subtle, insidious triumph of dazzling wordplay and haunting melodies....quite simply unlike any musical you have seen before, and a brilliant achievement."
-- Ken Mendelbaum, Theater Week

"A brilliant show, filled with dark, demented humor, as horrifying as it is hilarious, and with a fascinating, uniquely American score that springs from the country's varied musical past. There's nothing else quite like it in New York.....a disturbing show, a musical that doesn't shrink from its intended message about violence in American history."
--Michael Kuchwara, Associated Press


Reviews of London Production:

"One of Sondheim's more fascinating exercises in the offbeat...the show's originality, bite and drive should silence most doubts..some of Sondheim's most incisive lyrics and bold musical effects."
--Bendict Nightingale, The London Times


"A lethally brilliant musical...pushes further out the limits of this extraordinary theatrical form...hard, unsentimental and blood-curdlingly funny...shocking, even slightly disorienting, which is, I think, precisely what it was meant to be."
--John Peter, The Sunday Times

"Marvelous....in every important respect (dramatic punch; incisive musical and lyrical intelligence; cunning control of irony, etc.) it dwarfs the elephantine, muddle-headed hulks of 'product' recently unveiled in the West End.....acutely aware of how music is a carrier of myths...this inaugural production takes perfect aim."
--Paul Taylor, The Independent

"Stirs the heart and mind....restores my faith in a seemingly bankrupt genre....(songs) are masterpieces of irony counterpointing form and content....a superb show...Sondheim and Weidman seduce you and shock you at the same time."
--Michael Billington, The Guardian

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