Anyone Can Whistle

The seemingly impossible happened in 1964 when two genius writers, namely Arthur Laurents and Stephen Sondheim, wrote a most random and bazaar failure of a musical called ANYONE CAN WHISTLE. The New York City Center, Encores! has revived the oddity, but rather than thinking, “This is great! Why don’t people revive this lost gem more often,” there is a swift recognition of exactly why the show only ran nine performances. If it weren’t for the super talents of the current cast, there would be very little to recommend. To start with there was Donna Murphy in the role originated by Angela Lansbury, Cora Hoover Hooper the Mayor. Murphy got the show going with a bang as she belted out “Me and My Town” supported by four male dancers. For some reason she looked like Debbie Reynolds in the first act with her pink early sixties suit and blonde hair. In the second act she morphed into Lucille Ball during the “Here’s Lucy” period (either of those ladies might have worked in the role). Murphy also scored with an effective singing of “A Parade in Town” and kept the show buzzing with a manic comic energy. Next there was Sutton Foster as Fay Apple. She stopped the show with her vocal trumpeting of “There Won’t Be Trumpets” and was delightful during her impersonation of a French soubrette. Foster sang the title song with a charming sweetness and reprised it later on in an exciting up tempo version that was exhilarating. Finally there was Raúl Esparza as J. Bowden Hapgood, the impostor of a doctor. His quirky dancing character, with a willowy Dick Van Dyke quality was immediately ingratiating and he triumphed with his singing of “Everybody Says Don’t.” An ensemble dance, “The Cookie Chase,” showed the crazy people escaping from the funny farm and thanks to Casey Nicholaw’s inspired direction and choreography the number was the biggest success of the production. Yes the score contains, “There Won’t Be Trumpets”, “Everybody Says Don’t” and “Anyone Can Whistle,” but that ends the greatness of the material. The story is silly and outlandish and none of the characters are believable as actual people. The real success of the show is the current cast and creative team and even these top talents of the business can’t save ANYONE CAN WHISTLE.