Encores! Off-Center: Assassins

City Center's invaluable concert-staging series tackles Stephen Sondheim and John Weidman's darkly brilliant 1990 musical, which follows a group of president killers (or attempted killers) as they plead their demented causes and bemoan their exclusion for the American Dream. Director Anne Kauffman's almost unbearably exciting cast includes Steven Pasquale as Booth, Shuler Hensley as Czolgosz, John Ellison Conlee as Guiteau, Alex Brightman as Zangara, Cory Michael Smith as Oswald, Steven Boyer as Hinckley, Erin Markey (!) as Fromme and Clifton Duncan as the Balladeer.