Late in the Stephen Sondheim-John Weidman one-act musical "Assassins," eight characters who either killed or tried to kill an American president form a motley chorus to bellow out "Another National Anthem." John Wilkes Booth, John Hinckley Jr., Sara Jane Moore and several lesser-known aspirants to historical notoriety complain about not getting the "prizes" they had hoped to win for their violent deeds.
Instead of being steeped in Broadway and operatic traditions, "Another National Anthem" sounds closer to one of Tom Waits' lurching quasi-Salvation Army Band marches. With its galumphing oom-pah-pah bluntness, the song stands as the most radical departure by the composer, who has pointedly reined in his characteristic European musical influences."Another National Anthem" offers an ominous reminder that, among America's misfits and have-nots, there have always been those who would do anything to be noticed. And on the new original cast album of "Assassins" (RCA Victor 60737; CD and cassette), the song, like the rest of the eight-song score, sounds far more substantial than it did on the stage of Playwrights Horizons, where the show ran for 73 performances last winter.
One reason for the improvement is that the score, which on stage was played by three instrumentalists, has been arranged by Michael Starobin for the record using a full orchestra. What emerges on disk is a cohesive theatrical song cycle on a theme that is as unpleasant as it is American.
Musically, Sondheim has staked out new territory by fusing his theatrical savvy with a mosaic of American popular styles, from Civil War ballads through John Philip Sousa marches and barbershop quartets to early-'70s folk-pop. The expanded orchestrations sharpen and deepen the strains of Americana.
Lyrically, Sondheim has retreated from the expansive humanism of "Into the Woods" to an attitude of brittle comic sarcasm. While the lyrics humanize the characters - who are portrayed as bound together in a demented spiritual lin-eage - they offer neither forgiveness nor openhearted compassion. The assassins are viewed as dangerous misfits driven by maniacal inner voices.
As did Sondheim's "Follies," "Assassins" connects its cast of crazies to period musical styles and puts everything under a show-business spotlight. But, in "Assassins," that light is not the rainbow glow of the Broadway stage but a jaundiced carnival glare.
In "Everybody's Got the Right," the seductive soft-shoe number that opens and closes the show, the proprietor of a carnival shooting gallery invites the would-be assassins to line up and "shoot a president."
In "The Ballad of Booth," a cheery 19th-century-style folk song laced with banjo and harmonica, the suite's narrator commentator, the Balladeer, taunts Booth by insisting it was his bad reviews as an actor that drove him to slay Abraham Lincoln.
The execution of James Garfield's assassin, Charles Guiteau (who recited an original poem, "I Am Going to the Lordy" on the gallows), has been turned into show-biz shtick in which Guiteau roars out verses with an Al Jolson-like verve. Jonathan Hadary brings a wonderful vaudevillian exuberance to the role.
"Unworthy of Your Love," the score's most emotionally double-edged moment, blends the voices of John Hinckley and Lynette(Squeaky) Fromme in praise of their respective obsessions, Jodie Foster and Charles Manson. "Let me feel fire/Let me drink poison" implores Fromme, who is sung by Annie Golden with exactly the right tone of creepy sincerity.
For this grisly-sweet duet, Sond-heim has concocted a subtly scathing, soft-rock parody that suggests a hybrid of John Lennon's platitudinous ballads with one of the more saccharine numbers from "Hair."
The album also includes the show's final scene, with all of Weidman's dialogue, in which Booth magically appears in the Texas Book Depository in Dallas to goad Oswald into shooting John F. Kennedy. The chilling moment is deepened by Victor Garber's powerful portrayal of Booth as an imperious, sneering Southern bigot. The scene also brings home the show's ugly underlying theme of evil begetting evil.
If "Assassins" seemed too short and episodic to succeed as a staged musical, it holds together beautifully as a recorded popular song cycle. Not since Randy Newman's 1974 album "Good Old Boys," which presented a checkered gallery of Southern characters in symphonic musical dress, has a suite of pop songs examined the complexities of the American psyche with such troubling depth.
Thematically, "Assassins," recalls Martin Scorsese's film "The King of Comedy," which peered into the void in American life where fame, ravenous envy and spiritual emptiness converge and ignite.
Like "The King of Comedy," "Assassins" has the slightly queasy feel of an extended sick joke. The Scorsese movie was not a commercial success. Nor does "Assassins," mordantly funny as it sometimes is, seem likely to exert a strong popular appeal. The abyss it contemplates is just too scary.