ANYONE CAN WHISTLE

[scenicdesign71]

I hadn't noticed this until just now, but last summer someone posted a complete video of the Encores! staging on YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qLbZTjt_dGY

Not great A/V quality -- half the words are muffled beyond comprehension -- but you do get at least a general sense of what made this concert so special.

City Center has been posting snippets from its archive on Twitter, and a little over a week ago they put up two brief (pro-shot) clips from ACW: portions of the title song and "Me And My Town":

 https://twitter.com/NYCityCenter/status/1242251183076413440

[scenicdesign71]

Jesse Green on the new complete recording of ACW:

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/19/theater/anyone-can-whistle-new-recording.html

[Bobster]

It's nearly complete, FYI.  

[scenicdesign71]

I must be getting old: as sorry as I was to miss last night's starry Anyone Can Whistle concert at Carnegie Hall, I just couldn't justify spending a lot of money for an evening I suspected wouldn't hold a candle to the incandescent 2010 Encores! version (which I was fortunate enough to see in-person).

When yesterday's concert was first announced last fall, one of my qualms was Vanessa Williams as Cora -- and those doubts may have been justified, though I wish I could say otherwise: New York Stage Review has published not one but two reviews, one more positive than the other, but both agree that Williams seemed underrehearsed and disengaged.  (As a side note, Stephen Suskin's pan also ventures a rare criticism of Madelaine Kahn's 1995 take on the same role as having been similarly off-track -- I'd always thought so, based on audio and video recordings, but I seemed to be in the slim minority on that).  Though Williams's casting here makes some intuitive sense, it perplexes me that I've rarely seen her really shine in Sondheim -- and have never been able to figure out exactly why that is, given her evident talent, intelligence and charisma in other contexts.

I am sorry to have missed Santino Fontana's "Simple" and Elizabeth Stanley's "Anyone Can Whistle"; otherwise, as far as I can gather (there have been very few other reviews, and no clips that I've been able to find thus far), it may not be such a tragedy to have missed this one-night-only affair.

Personally, I'm still disappointed that the Encores! version never got an audio or video recording: it richly deserved both.  At the time, I even harbored a wild fantasy of Ives doing further work to somehow whip Laurents's book into shape, lopping a half-hour off the running time, and transferring the City Center cast to Broadway in a full production -- or at least a fuller one, a la Wonderful Town in 2003 -- that might finally redeem ACW's reputation as being unproduceable.  Alas, that reputation stands, notwithstanding occasional low-profile productions by adventurous smaller theaters; even as the 2010 concert rekindled my hopes for the show, I knew the chances of such hopes being realized were slim-to-none.  But the lack of an Encores! cast album, at the very least, was and remains dismaying.

There's always YouTube:  in addition to the Encores! version, someone has also posted complete video of the 2005 LuPone/Cerveris/McDonald Ravinia staging in two separate halves.

[KathyB]

I just got an e-mail from the Youth Repertory Ensemble at the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center, and they are presenting Anyone Can Whistle from July 28-31. 

Part of me is wondering how this particular show would be like put on by teenagers, and part of me sees that tickets are only $10, and I won't ever have another opportunity to see this show. There's also the part of me that doesn't want to drive sixty-something miles each way, and the part of me that sees there's a matinee performance for the closing performance on Sunday, so I can do all that driving during daylight.

Any thoughts?

[scenicdesign71]

Thoughts:

1. Go see!

2. Write detailed review!

3. Post here!

[DiveMilw]

@KathyB - I agree with David.   

[KathyB]

The 23rd Anniversary Production of the Youth Repertory Ensemble

Anyone Can Whistle

Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center
July 31, 2022

This is going to be more like a stream of consciousness outpouring of thoughts than a formal review, because if I sit around too long trying to write a good, coherent review, I'm never going to start.

First of all I can now cross Anyone Can Whistle off my bucket Sondheim list (a list that is depressingly long). It was very much worth the 132-mile round trip, and the very uncomfortable seat in the theatre, and the $12 (including fees) that I paid for the ticket. It is an odd show (I overheard several different people at intermission who were having trouble figuring out what was going on. I basically knew the plot, and I still had a bit of trouble keeping up with it). I can see why it isn't produced more often. I think the book is its weakest part (Fay's big speech notwithstanding). I was somewhat worried about how good it could be being put on by a group of teenagers, but I'm thinking now that maybe this is the perfect kind of group to put on this show--there are a lot of ensemble parts, lots of small opportunities for individual actors to shine, and lots of people in the audience who will applaud like crazy no matter what--even if they can't quite follow what the show is about. 

The young woman who played Cora had a big voice and a big stage presence. I don't know if Cora is supposed to be at all sympathetic, because she definitely was not, in any way, shape or form. (Are we supposed to sympathize with her during "Me and My Town"? Or not?) I thought all three lead characters were outstanding. The way the show is structured, they all have their strong moments alone, but not too many of them together. Cora and her team of Magruder, Cooley and Schub are usually off on their own, apart from the Hapgood/Fay storyline--which has got to be the least believable falling-in-love that I've seen in a musical, and I blame the book for that. "Come Play Wiz Me" is more of a cutesy meeting song than a falling-in-love song, and I suppose Fay and Hapgood are supposed to be falling for each other in the hotel room scene that follows that song, but it isn't written very well. I thought the two hotel room scenes were the low points of the show, despite some fantastic songs ("Everybody Says Don't" and "Anyone Can Whistle") taking place during them.

This production was in two acts, not three, and the intermission was right after "Anyone Can Whistle." It probably would have been more effective if it had come right after "You are all mad," which would make it more clear that the actors are breaking the fourth wall, but then that would make for a very long second act. The interrogation scene was very good, although I suspect that this scene in particular was one of the parts that were hard for audience members to follow. (I also think Fay needs to be in this scene, because it would give her the opportunity to see how Hapgood's mind works from the beginning, which would make the falling-in-love less problematic.) Very strong ensemble work during this scene.

Cute "Come Play Wiz Me," with ensemble members holding up cue cards that functioned as supertitles for the French lyrics. Strong ensemble work again during the Cookie Chase scene, although there were so many things going on all over the stage that it was hard to keep track of all of them. (Cora is singing, some of the Cookies are dancing, some of the law enforcement people are locking them up, and Fay is trying to steal the large key.) And "With So Little to Be Sure Of" was beautiful and well-sung, in spite of the lack of chemistry between Hapgood and Fay.

I noticed some lyric changes, probably because these are more enlightened times now.  I would guess these are sanctioned/encouraged by the licensing agency.

All in all, I am very glad I went to see this production, despite the nasty traffic jam on my way in (caused by people going to the Colorado Renaissance Festival--fortunately, I had planned for a traffic situation when figuring out what time to leave). It surpassed my expectations.

[scenicdesign71]

Yay!   Thanks for this, Kathy!  I'm glad you got to cross it off your Sondheim bucket list.  And that it was worth the trip!

I don't think Cora is supposed to be sympathetic during "Me And My Town," though her venality should be, then and always, deliciously entertaining.  She's a cartoon villainess from first to last, and if she has a sympathetic moment at all -- very brief, and vanishingly slight in terms of any actual softening effect -- it would be during "A Parade In Town".  (And even there, you could argue that, in giving Cora's hunger for attention a slightly more personal shading, "Parade" actually sharpens, rather than softening, our feelings toward her: it suggests that she's not only a professional publicity-whore, operating wholly from cynical political or financial motives, but an actual dyed-in-the-wool narcissist to boot: if her personality even has more than two dimensions (debatable), it's cynicism all the way down (albeit a kind of droll, fun-loving cynicism -- she clearly adores being the villain; it's just the lack of an audience, now that everyone's hot for Hapgood, that has her feeling temporarily deflated).

What was the set like?  How did they represent the Miracle Rock?

(My longstanding craving for a full production of ACW was only whetted, a few years back, by the pics of William and Jean Eckart's delicious original Broadway design in their coffee-table retrospective The Performing Set.  Some are available online; I'll try to round up a few and post them on this page).

[KathyB]

The set, quite frankly, looked as if it had been designed and put together by a group of teenagers. Which I'm not saying as criticism; in fact, I'm wondering if it was a conscious choice by the set designer, who is a member of the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center Theatre School faculty. It definitely captured the upbeat mood of the show. 

The miracle rock was nothing more than a large piece of plywood, painted with the letters "R O C K" and with iridescent fabric ribbons attached that somebody tossed up and over when the water began to flow. It got a laugh from the audience. The rock piece was on wheels and swung around so that you could see the inner workings of the system, which included some boxes, a couple of gauges, some PVC pipes and a ship's wheel. It also had a confetti cannon that went off at the end when the rock actually began to flow.

[KathyB]

Question that's been nagging me: Who built the contraption/mechanism inside the Miracle Rock and turned it on? I'm not sure if it's a plot hole, or if I just completely missed the answer during this production. I know that "I've Got You to Lean On" is basically Cora and her gang trying to figure out the answer to this question, but I don't remember them ever getting there.

[scenicdesign71]

That always struck me as weird too.  Best I could ever figure it, we're meant to assume that Cora's minions cooked the whole thing up -- but it is introduced so oddly that I wouldn't absolutely swear to it.

However, I don't recall "I've Got You To Lean On" as dealing with how the fake miracle actually came about, so much as with plotting to shift the public blame for its inevitable failure onto Hapgood.  The specifics of how to accomplish that aren't especially lucid -- are they fingering him as the fraudster who engineered the whole thing? or as the killjoy who exposed it? or somehow (counterintuitively) both? -- because Cora and her henchmen couldn't care less about such petty details, and they assume (probably correctly) that no one else will either.  The point is that the local economy is about to crater once again, the townspeople are going to demand a scapegoat, and Hapgood will do nicely.

Or at least that's my take on it.  Admittedly it's been awhile since I read the libretto.