Review: You Know How to WHISTLE – Put Sondheim's Score in the Right Hands, As MasterVoices Concert at Carnegie Hall Showed

The original title of the Sondheim-Laurents ANYONE CAN WHISTLE was THE NATIVES ARE RESTLESS--but you could hardly describe the crowd at Carnegie Hall on Thursday for the MasterVoices concert performance of the troubled musical as "fidgety."

They were willing and able to sit through the cockamamie book and story Arthur Laurents concocted (narrated deftly by Joanna Gleason, INTO THE WOODS' original Baker's Wife) to hear the wonderful score by the late and very lamented Stephen Sondheim. And, believe me, Ted Sperling, skillfully leading the orchestra and big chorus, with a couple of strong guest performers, showed how good much of this score can be.

What's this review doing in the longhair section of the BroadwayWorld site, anyway? (There's another on the theatre side, by the way.) Well, if you have to be reminded, Sondheim was a serious composer who happened to excel at entertaining and enlightening us, even in the most dire of circumstances. (SWEENEY TODD, anyone?) Just listen to the title song, if you need convincing.

Despite its spotty performance history (its original production lasted only a few nights, even with Angela Lansbury and Lee Remick in the cast), the show's not a disaster; a short run at City Center's Encore series showed in 2010 that cutting down Laurents' prose (via David Ives) was a good start. But the direction by Casey Nicholaw cinched it, with no slight to Sperling. Encores had more resources and a more experienced leader for the trials put in front of him by this show.

Still, there's that Sondheim score, particularly in the second act. That was enough for much of the audience at the concert, particularly in the hands of Elizabeth Stanley, as Nurse Fay Apple, and Santino Fontana, as Hapgood, the "doctor" who turned out to be one more patient. Both sang as if they'd been waiting for the chance all their lives. No slight to Vanessa Williams as the villainess, Mayoress (sic) Cora Hoover Hooper, but she needed more help slipping into Lansbury's (and Encores' Donna Murphy's) pumps, though she did have the presence.

While Stanley might be the least known of the "names above the title," she had some of Sondheim's best work in the show. She did spectacularly well with "There Won't Be Trumpets" (actually cut from the original), the duet "Come Play Wiz Me" with Fontana and, particularly, "Anyone Can Whistle." Fontana did a wonderfully upbeat "Everybody Says Don't," the touching "With So Little to Be Sure Of" and his duets with Stanley. Williams was in good form with "A Parade in Town" and in all the dancing had with the four men who were the Mayoress's sidekicks, to JoAnn M. Hunter's choreography.

The other cast standouts--besides the excellent MasterVoices members who were the "cookies" in the asylum--were Broadway veterans Douglas Sills who always makes an impression even with limited exposure (as here, with no song) and Michael Mulheren, showing off their terrific comic timing.

While it may not have been perfect--good luck with this show!--the MasterVoices concert under Ted Sperling showed that, yes, "anyone can whistle."

ANYONE CAN WHISTLE was presented on March 10 at Carnegie Hall. For more information, visit the MasterVoices website.

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