Stephen sondheim wrote two music­als in the latter half of the 1980s that could not superficially be more different. Into the Woods (1986) combines figures from children’s literature – Little Red Riding Hood, Jack on his beanstalk – into a comic romp, while Assassins (1990) is probably Broadway’s most adult score: a homicidal songbook dramatising nine of the people who have tried to kill (some succeeding, others not) an American president, from Lincoln to Ford. The brilliance of Jamie Lloyd’s revival at the Menier Chocolate Factory is his understanding that Assassins is as much of a fairy tale or fable as its predecessor, a grimmer than Grimm nightmare that warns of the consequences for a country that promises its citizens guaranteed access to both happin