Anyone Can Whistle
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| Anyone Can Whistle | ||
| Original Broadway Production | ||
|---|---|---|
 Original Cast Recoding |
||
| Music | Stephen Sondheim | |
| Lyrics | Stephen Sondheim | |
| Book | Arthur Laurents | |
| Theatre | Majestic Theatre | |
| Opened | April 4, 1964 | |
| Closed | April 11, 1964 | |
| Producer(s) | Kermit Bloomgarden and Diana Krasny | |
| Director | Arthur Laurents | |
| Choreographer | Herbert Ross | |
| Scenic designer | Willam Eckard and Jean Eckart | |
| Costume designer | Theoni V. Aldredge | |
| Lighting designer | Jules Fisher | |
Anyone Can Whistle is a Broadway musical with a book by Arthur Laurents and music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim.
Set in an imaginary town that has gone bankrupt, it focuses on the tough, unpopular mayoress, Cora Hoover Hooper, who - determined to rescue it from financial ruin - together with her political cronies creates a tourist attraction by faking a miracle - curative waters spouting from a rock in the town square. They find themselves challenged by skeptical Fay Apple, a nurse at the local sanitarium, who intends to use her patients to disprove the claim. Onto the scene comes J. Bowden Hapgood, a patient mistaken for a psychiatrist, who divides the town into two groups, the sane and the loony, but refuses to divulge which is which. The story's point is that "normal" is a euphemism for self-control, conformity, and order, and its moral is that the true miracle simply is being alive.
Anxious to work with both Laurents and Sondheim, Angela Lansbury accepted the lead role, despite her strong misgivings about the script and her ability to handle the score. Also signed were Lee Remick and Harry Guardino. Following several weeks of rehearsal in New York City, the company moved to Philadelphia for a pre-Broadway tryout period. The reviews were brutal and the audiences hostile, talking back to the cast and walking out in droves. Director Laurents, ignoring criticism about the show's message being trite and its absurdist style difficult to comprehend, poured his energies into restaging rather than dealing with the crux of the problem. Also hampering the production was the fact neither Remick nor Guardino could sing, and Lansbury was being overshadowed by actor Harry Lascoe (whose sudden death of a heart attack on stage resolved that problem in an unexpected way).
After multiple revisions, the show limped onto Broadway, opening on April 4, 1964 at the Majestic Theatre, where it closed after nine performances, unable to overcome the generally negative reviews it had received. Choreographer Herbert Ross ultimately received the show's sole Tony Award nomination. Although there never has been a major revival of the show, it has become a cult favorite, and the original cast recording sold well among Sondheim fans and musical theater buffs. "There Won't Be Trumpets", a tune cut during previews, has become a favorite of cabaret performers.
In 1995, a concert reading of the show was performed at Carnegie Hall as a benefit for the Gay Men's Health Crisis. The concert was recorded, preserving for the first time musical passages and numbers not included on the original recording. Lansbury served as narrator, with Madeline Kahn taking on the role of Cora. Bernadette Peters and Scott Bakula played Fay and Hapgood. Additional cast included Chip Zien, Ken Page, and Harvey Evans, the only original cast member to reprise his role.
[edit] Song list
- "Me and My Town"
- "Miracle Song"
- "Hooray For Hapgood"
- "Come Play Wiz Me"
- "Anyone Can Whistle"
- "A Parade In Town"
- "Everybody Says Don't"
- "I've Got You To Lean On"
- "See What It Gets You"
- "There's Always A Woman"
- "With So Little To Be Sure Of"
[edit] Reference
Balancing Act, The Authorized Biography of Angela Lansbury by Martin Gottfried, published by Little, Brown and Company, 1999
