Picture: Danny With a Camera
Anyone Can Whistle continues at Southwark Playhouse, London until 7 May 2022.
Star rating: four stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ✩
Musicals are by their nature absurd – or at least certainly a step or two away from reality – but some musicals are just way more absurd than others. King of the Fools – the one with the jangliest jester cap – is arguably Stephen Sondheim and Arthur Laurents’ Anyone Can Whistle, their infamous flop from 1964.
Despite its creators’ success with West Side Story, the show seemed doomed from the outset. Barbra Streisand was due to star but pivoted into Funny Girl instead; it endured ill-received tryouts in Philadelphia, of all places, with a newcomer to the musical theatre stage, Angela Lansbury, in the lead; there were deaths (one of the leads died during the tryouts, and a dancer notoriously fell into the orchestra pit, striking a string player a fatal blow); and when it finally opened on Broadway, it closed after 12 previews and just nine performances, losing all of its $350,000 investment – a figure today worth at least $4 million.
With a slightly more modest budget, a rare revival has exploded on to the London stage at the commendably risk-taking Southwark Playhouse. Directed by the somewhat green Georgie Rankcom – a 2019 graduate of the Guildford School of Acting and founder of The Grey Area production company – and starring the sensational Alex Young, it grabs Laurents’ bonkers book in a headlock and refuses to let go. It’s a wild, kaleidoscopic joyride that gives its star the chance to dazzle and save what might have been a hot mess of a show.
The plot – or plots, for there are a few – whizz by like fireworks from the central premise, which is that a desperately poor township needs a miracle to save its starving, restless natives (coincidentally, Restless Natives was an early name for the show). For ‘township’, read somewhere like (apologies!) Croydon or Barrow-in-Furness, for this production appears to be set in a less-wealthy corner of the UK. Anyway, it’s granted its miracle in the shape of a rock that appears to gush healing waters – in reality, some kind of wash-off pumped in from an abandoned sewer – thus revitalising the fortune of the town and its hateful mayoress, Cora Hoover Hooper (Young).
As the pilgrims rush in to spend their hard-earned cash, Fay Apple (Chrystine Symone), the head nurse from a nearby mental hospital known locally as The Cookie Jar, ushers 49 of her charges (or ‘Cookies’) into the queue to partake of the miraculous waters. Her ambition to scrutinise the rock fails, as Hooper’s henchmen – Comptroller Schub (Danny Lane), Treasurer Cooley (Samuel Clifford) and Chief Police Office Magruder (Renan Teodoro, making his professional debut) – deny her and her Cookies access, ensuring that their scam is not exposed. In the ensuing chaos, the patients disperse into the crowd and become indistinguishable from the populace.
Cue the arrival of J Bowden Hapgood (Jordan Broatch, another professional debut). They, through some plot shenanigans, are called upon to sort the crowd into two groups – 1 and A – and lock the Cookies back up in the asylum. I could go on talking through the plot but it doesn’t really matter – my time and space is limited. There’s so much to unpick from the various threads that it’s definitely a show that bears seeing at least twice. Needless to say, Bowden is tasked with being the romantic lead and falls for the uptight Fay.
The key to this production’s success – Sondheim’s glorious tunes aside – is the star attraction, Alex Young. She absolutely nails the character of the arch mayoress, channelling French and Saunders, Victoria Wood and Catherine O’Hara’s Moira Rose, mixed in with a disturbing touch of Liz Truss, Sarah Palin, Princess Diana and Margaret Thatcher. The result is a hideous Frankestina monster of a woman who you can’t help but fall in love with and root for, despite the worst aspects of her character. There are so many joyful moments when Young is in the spotlight – she steals every scene as easily as stealing a lollipop from a little ’un, which her Cora does, of course! – and I was aching to see her back on stage during her down time.
Cora also gets the more traditional musical theatre numbers. For her, Sondheim penned delicious parodies that ridicule the frivolity and vapidness of some of the Broadway classics, and in turn capture perfectly the bloodless shallowness of his corrupt Mayoress. Cora’s opening number, ‘Me and My Town’, shuffles between sultry and beatnik, and ‘I’ve Got You to Lean On’ reveals her sly selfishness disguised as a buddy song. You just can’t take your eyes off of Young, and you daren’t, in case you miss a quick purse of the lips or arched eyebrow. Her Cora is one of the finest comedy portrayals of any character I’ve seen.
With shallower depths to mine, thanks to Laurents’ flawed script, romantic leads Broatch and Symone have to work hard to reveal their characters and also not be left in Young’s shadow. But work hard they do, with Symone in particularly strong voice. Both are exciting talents at the outset of their careers, and how fun that they’ve been tested – and succeeded – so early on with this bizarre show. They also get some of Sondheim’s finest melodies, in ‘Come Play Wiz Me’, ‘Everybody Says Don’t’, ‘There Won’t Be Trumpets’ and, nicest of all, ‘With So Little To Be Sure Of’.
At times, the sound system – dialled up to 11 by the end of the press night, pushing the cones of those poor speakers to their limits – did them little favours, but I’m hoping this will even out over the course of the run. The band may have been on the loud side but it does sound fabulous. Natalie Pound leads the five-piece from the keys – or 10 instruments with doubling plus a whole kitchen of percussion – and handles Charlie Ingles’ lovely new orchestrations effortlessly.
The supporting cast of Cookies, pilgrims and townsfolk is a gloriously diverse bunch representing a commendable array of age, body shape, gender and ethnicity. Sondheim’s shows might not have been the most colourful – Pacific Overtures aside, his are a particularly white dramatis personae, although Whistle was the first, and perhaps only?, of his shows to have a part written for a black actor (the role of Martin). Here, though, we’re treated to a fantastic cast that’s as talented as it is varied: Nathan Taylor, Kathryn Akin, Marisha Morgan, Hana Ichijo, Teddy Hinde, Shane Convery and Jensen Tudtud. Bravo all.
Cory Shipp’s set design brings to mind a catwalk runway show, presumably configured to have Group A on one side and Group 1 on the other. It’s a nice conceit, though it does narrow the playing area and must’ve given choreographer Lisa Stevens a headache. However, there’s never not a flurry of limbs, as she serves up a riot of colourful if tight dancing. Front row punters, watch your feet!
Whistle – flop as it originally was – triggered something of a shift on Broadway, so its importance as a show, and a cult classic, can’t be overstated. One review in 1964 said of the piece: “If Anyone Can Whistle is a success, the American musical theatre will have advanced itself and prepared the way for further breakdown of now old and worn techniques and points of view.” It continued: “If it is not a success, we sink back into the old formula method and must wait for the breakthrough.”
Well, fail it did, and you might well see why if you pop down to the Southwark Playhouse and catch this crazy production. It’s a tad too long – it’s that rare thing, a three-act musical, with the first two combined for a bum-achingly long sitting – and the surreal book will likely challenge anyone who’s not seen it before. The portrayal of mental illness might be seen as questionable, too. But none of this prevents Whistle being a total blast of a show – it’s unlike anything you’ll have seen before and, wow, does it breathe fresh life into the London theatre scene. Thank you to Rankcom and the good and crazy people at The Grey Area who had the audacity to choose this piece, and to Southwark for hosting it. I loved every minute.
As that 1964 Morning Telegraph review concluded: “To all concerned, a thank you for trying, a thank you for wanting to elevate the American musical theatre to new standards of intellect. Let no one concerned be discouraged.” Amen to that!
Craig Glenday
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