Anyone Can Whistle review: Understandable why it flopped on Broadway in 1964
A rare chance to see this Stephen Sondheim/Arthur Laurents musical that flopped on Broadway in 1964. It's not hard to see why, in spite of this fun-filled, pepped-up production. It is set in a bankrupt, drought-ridden US town whose corrupt female mayor Cora Hoover Hopper (Alex Young) comes up with the money-making scheme of a Miracle - a huge rock that produces water.
Pilgrims come to witness the miracle along with an alleged “Miracle Investigator” from Lourdes who is actually the head nurse of the local asylum entitled the “Cookie Jar”.
In her new guise, uptight Nurse Fay (Chrystyne Symone) becomes a slinky French seductress with an outrageous blonde wig who becomes involved with the newly arrived “Dr” Hapgood (Jordan Broatch) who is, himself, a fraud.
To say complications ensue is the understatement of the decade.
A promenade stage with the audience ranged on either side allows actors to run, hop and dance up and down, sing songs (some, like Everybody Says Don’t) are very good indeed) and generally play havoc with a script that sounds like a it was written in an evening of stoned revelry in the 1960s after reading Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest which undoubtedly inspired it.
Young somehow manages to combine Margo from The Good Life with Mae West in her portrayal of Mayoress Cora while the satire on political corruption and the hypocrisy of those who exploit religion for their own prophet, I mean profit, is as subtle as spray canned graffiti.
It’s absolutely cuckoo and probably best recommended for Sondheim completists or the very tolerant.
• Southwark Playhouse until May 7 Tickets: 020 7407 0234