Frankly, it aggravates me that, 35 years later, “Assassins” remains a timely and urgent piece of theater. Then again, the whole point of Stephen Sondheim’s disputed masterpiece is that Americans always have and always will love their guns, and the delusional power they afford people who have no business being allowed anywhere near gunpowder.

But “Assassins,” currently being staged by the Miners Alley Performing Arts Center in Golden, is not a play about guns or gun rights. Not at all, actually. Pretty sure you never once hear mention of the Second Amendment. No, it’s a play about the epidemic of mental illness in America. It’s about our thirst for any shortcut to celebrity. And mostly it’s about the consequences that come when deranged people wake up and realize that not all men are created with equal access to the ever-slippery lie that is the American Dream. But they do have equal access to a gun.

The musical, set in a kind of carnival limbo, centers on nine actual or would-be presidential assassins from John Wilkes Booth to John Hinckley Jr. These killers interact with one another and their intended targets as they vie for their place in history.

Sondheim’s songs are among his best. But John Weidman’s 1990 book is just unnervingly profound. So many years later, just about every word in MAP’s astonishing staging sounds ripped straight from the toxic cesspool of present-day social media.

What’s most discombobulating about the ravings of these nutbags and neurotics from failed actor John Wilkes Booth to Squeaky Fromme is 1) how close to the bone some of their screeds and grievances might hit you in 2025 – whether you reside on the right or the left. This staging makes it uncomfortably understandable how you or I might come to believe that one of our inherited inalienable rights is to revolt against our own government when it fails to fulfill its moral promises. Even if we reside on opposite corners of the political spectrum.

And then again, 2: How utterly absent of a political ideology some of our most notorious killers have been.

On the one hand, you have Sam Byck, who attempted to hijack a plane flying out of D.C., intending to crash it into the White House in the hopes of killing President Richard Nixon. That was Feb. 22, 1974, an eerie foreshadowing of 9/11. On the other, you have John Hinckley Jr., who attempted to assassinate President Ronald Reagan to impress actor Jodie Foster. That was March 30, 1981, an eerie foreshadowing of … every dumb reality TV program since then that has turned freaks into influencers.

I have not  been an actual theater critic since 2012, but … to heck with it: A few things must be said of this staging:

This is a completely realized local theater production masterfully directed by Warren Sherrill and perfectly cast from ensemble to musicians to lobby bartenders. The technical elements, from lighting to sound to the scenic design and set dressing, reveal a confident, coherent, unified production that is in complete control of the story it wants to tell. This may be the best collection of talent on one stage that you will see on any Colorado stage this or any other year.

Sherrill and his actors have worked out every line, every beat, every nuance, every pause, every moment of discomfort, every ideological contradiction, every opportunity to balance the somber seriousness of the topic at hand with daggers of humor.

We have these “moments” that pop up every so often on the local arts scene, and you either have to jump on them when they happen, or live to regret it forever. This is one of those moments. Just go see it.

This would be the first time in my professional life where I would say: If you do go, and you don’t also see the greatness that I saw, well, then, I guess I have no choice but to challenge you to a duel. Because, as ever, the way we Americans resolve ideological conflicts was, is and forever shall be to take up arms.

“Assassins” plays through Sept. 14 at 1100 Miners Alley in Golden. Info at minersalley.com.