can listen 'Tonight, tonight . . .' 1 love that song". His message completed, he leaves singing "Everything's great in America . . ." John Hinckley also enjoys singing, but only his own compositions, angrily accompanied on his acoustic guitar. "I am UNWORTHY OF YOUR LOVE", he admits in an overwrought ballad addressed to his "girlfriend", Jodie Foster. Lynette Fromme watches and then delivers her own version of the number, addressed to her lover (and the new Messiah) Charles Manson. But Hinckley blows his opportunity to prove his worthiness to Jodie when he starts shooting unsuccessfully at a photo of President Reagan that is projected on to the back wall. The President just keeps wisecracking his way through the bullets - and, hey, where'd that guy learn to shoot anyway? The Russian army? Charles Guiteau has better luck. In 1881, he meets President Garfield at the Baltimore and Potomac station in Washington and asks to be made Ambassador to France. Garfield ignores him and is fatally shot in the back. Failed lawyer, preacher, politician and author, Garfield's killer is looking forward to being an angel and, in THE BALLAD OF GUITEAU (I AM GOING TO THE LORDY), cakewalks up and down the gallows steps with irrepressible cheerfulness. Before his assassination of Garfield and execution, Guiteau had given Sara Jane Moore some lessons in how to shoot up her Kentucky Fried Chicken more accurately. But they don't seem to have paid off. Trying now to shoot President Ford, she kills her dog instead. And she got all her dates mixed up, so she had to bring the kid along and he's screaming for an ice-cream and Lynette is screaming at her for bring the kid and the dog to an assassination. "Look, we came here to kill the President", shrieks Moore. "Let's just kill him and go home". Enter President Ford, who trips on the bullets she's dropped, very considerately hands them back to her and proceeds on his way as Moore and Fromme pull their triggers helplessly behind him. After Sam Byck's abortive mission to crash an airliner into the White House, he and the seven other assassins come together to explain their motives: one did it to avenge the ravaged South, another so her friends would know where she was coming from. Now, they want their prizes. For the first time, they are no longer freakish, embittered, angry individuals but a group with a common purpose, marching to ANOTHER NATIONAL ANTHEM - not the one you cheer at the ballpark, but the anthem of those who can't get in. As the march dies away, the Blue Ridge Boys play Heartache Serenade, and we're listening to a transistor radio in the sixth floor storeroom of the Texas School Book Depository on 22 November 1963. On the verge of taking his own life, Lee Harvey Oswald is interrupted by Booth and the other assassins, and invited instead to make history. The assassins who preceded Oswald say he will bring them back; those who came after him say he will make them possible, by once again making assassinations a part of the American experience. His act can give them historical power as a united force, not as a bunch of isolated "nuts". Oswald refuses and Booth entices him with the statement that when Hinckley's room is searched after his assassination attempt on President Reagan, every book written about Oswald will be found. Through the window, flags are flying, bands are marching to patriotic tunes, the President's motorcade is about to pass by the cheering crowds. 1n here, this is America, too", says Booth - the land where any kid can grow up to be President, or grow up to kill a President. Oswald picks up his gun and moves to the window. As President Kennedy dies, his assassin takes his place among his confreres in the last empty booth at the carnival. He has brought them back, he has made them possible, and, for those ordinary Americans, who'll always remember where they were when they heard the news, SOMETHING JUST BROKE. Their despair stands in quiet contrast to the jaunty reprise of their theme, EVERYBODY'S GOT THE RIGHT ... to their dreams. And, as in all the happy endings in all the best musicals, your dream can come true if you just go out and get it. CHARACTERS • JOHN WILKES BOOTH - An actor and passionate champion of the South during the Civil War. • GIUSEPPE ZANGARA - A short (under five feet) immigrant who failed to kill Franklin Roosevelt because he had to stand on a chair and it wobbled. • LEON CZOLGOSZ - The son of Polish immigrants, a worker in a glass factory and supporter of anarchist groups. • JOHN HINCKLEY - A man who shot President Reagan and three others to impress a girl he'd never met.
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