Some thoughts on the end of Assassins with JFK

So, something occurred to me.

Assassins came out in 1991, so that was 28 years after JFK was assassinated. Meaning you could say a good amount of audience members still held that memory vividly and were the people in "Something Just Broke" (even though that song wasn't there yet). The musical becomes personal and present in that moment and especially I'm sure it felt that way in the early 90s.

Now as time goes by, the show still ends with JFK and my question is, will that continue to be effective the further we get away from this event? At what point will JFK's assassination be seen as not categorically different than any of the others we witness in the show earlier?

Does this show have a potential to throughout the evening be a timeless walk through history and end feeling dated?

These aren't necessarily things I feel but more questions I'm putting out to others.

I agree with Valentina that audiences who were not there to experience JFK's assassination will attach their own (more contemporary) experiences Something Just Broke, a song that I am increasingly finding more essential to the complete evening - especially for a 20something like me who hasn't been around for any of the events depicted or suggested in the show.

I hypothesize one thing that will help keep the show's ending from becoming too dated is that of the four assassinations depicted, JFK's is the one we have video of, the one we built still-argued conspiracies out of, the one Oliver Stone made a long movie of. The same can't be said for McKinley, Garfield, or even fully for Lincoln and so even though all of the shows events are constantly becoming further and further from the present, JFK still has an immediacy for me that I hope works for others as well.

There is tremendous emotional power for me--and presumably others who were alive in the 60s and 70s-- in the Oswald scenes. The sight of a slightly-built man in that white T-shirt--whom we've neither seen/nor heard from up to that point--gives me chills every time. And that image of Jackie in the pink dress on the trunk of the Lincoln? It carries all the wallop of photos of planes approaching the towers on 9/11.

The message of the show does not depend upon familiarity with the specific stories and "Something Just Broke" might resonate with anyone who has lived through a momentous, tragic event, but I have to believe that for anyone who remembers Camelot--and its aftermath--'Assassins' packs an extra punch.

Yeah, I was 9 at the time. I certainly understood that something major had happened (all my favorite TV shows were cancelled for the next three days), but the memory doesn't have the same emotional impact as something like the onset of the AIDS epidemic.

The show ASSASSINS is about the dark side of the American dream and should remain relevant relevant as long as ours is a country where we confuse "everyone has a right to his dreams" with "everyone has a right to realize his dreams".

On the other hand, I just came from the "Let's dump on OKLAHOMA!" thread, so perhaps I'm putting too much faith in Americans' ability to honor our history.

LeafConeyBear - you're parents might not have any stories. My son is 16, and I was only 6 months old JFK was killed. So unless your folks are much older than am I (and I'm older then lots of my son's friend's parents) there is nothing to share.

To the general conversation, I think Sondheim is far too brilliant to not be writing about universality.

Valentina3 said: "I'm sure most people remember what they were doing during 9/11."

It's where my mind went during the song... and I experienced a feeling of strangeness around the idea of people "remembering what they were doing" all around the country when they found out about 9/11. Because I was in school a couple of blocks away and experienced a lot of mental trauma on that day. I ended up feeling incredibly emotional during that song as a result.

The words "something just broke" felt quite apt.