Review: ANYONE CAN WHISTLE, Union Theatre

It's not often that a reviewer can lift a line from a programme and unequivocally endorse it, but when Phil Willmott describes Anyone Can Whistle as "absolutely bonkers", he's absolutely correct! The 1964 Arthur Laurents / Stephen Sondheim collaboration was a rare flop in their stellar careers, playing just nine performances and since acquiring a sheen of cultish celebrity, its songs appearing in Side by Side by Sondheim and other tribute shows. What's the deal then?

It's very much a show that you have to take on its own terms. The plot is gossamer thin and trite, the characters broad, the subject matter politically incorrect and it's ever so pleased with itself.

Swallow that lot - and many won't - and you're left with something really rather good. The satire bites hard: the 49 (+1) "cookies' locked away in a One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest secure hospital plainly stand for the 50 states of the USA, while the three branches of the US Government are represented by the Mayoress, the Judge and the preacher-Comptroller. Who are the mad ones (and what is madness anyway) are themes that run through the show and are the lunatics in charge of the asylum?

To revive a town now dead on its feet after its industry exhausted all markets for its goods, the authorities concoct a bit of false news (yep, you see where I'm going with this) about water springing from a rock, in the hope, quickly realised, that the dumb saps in the State will buy it for its magical curative properties. It's all a scam of course and threatens to be exposed if the cookies drink it and stay as they are - the Mayoress and Judge vow to avoid that eventuality. There's a sub-plot about a fact-obsessed nurse posing as a miracles expert with a fetching French accent and her would-be lover, a doctor (or is he?), who proves the cookies are no different to the regular townsfolks by separating them into two arbitrary groups.

The songs are, as you would expect from Sondheim, both marvellous to hear and impossible to hum. Felicity Duncan, decked out like a superannuated Betty Boop as Mayoress Cora Hoover Hooper, belts out plenty in "Me and My Town" and "Parade in Town", two numbers that display her one qualification for the post - a narcissistic egomania (see...). She gets good support from Judge Schub, James Horne channeling WC Fields' voice and Kenneth Connor's Carry-On ageing randiness (watch the walking stick).

As putative lovers, Rachel Delooze wears a mean red wig and nails the title song beautifully, while Oliver Stanley draws a little on Rocky Horror's Brad as the "is he or isn't he for real" clean cut Dr Hapgood. There's some energetic dancing and ticcing from the ensemble and good work from the band under Musical Director Richard Baker.

On the way home, I started talking to my son about what it was all about. He got the political stuff and the parallels with the current White House regime, but not the stuff about how (or indeed, whether) to draw the line between the "sane" and the "insane". At home, by way of explanation, I played him Emma Stone's beautiful song from La La Land, "The Fools Who Dream" with its lyric -

"A bit of madness is key
To give us new colours to see
Who knows where it will lead us?
And that's why they need us"

So bring on the rebels
The ripples from pebbles
The painters, and poets, and plays

And here's to the fools who dream
Crazy as they may seem
Here's to the hearts that break
Here's to the mess we make."

Get that, and you'll get Anyone Can Whistle.

Anyone Can Whistle continues at the Union Theatre until 11 March.

Photo Scott Rylander.

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