Death and dissension dogged Sondheim show the first time
By Douglas J. Keating
Inquirer Theater Critic

BONNIE WELLER/Inquirer
Director Charles Gilbert (kneeling) and
Chuck Wagner rehearse at the Prince
Music Theater for the revival of "Anyone Can Whistle."

It wouldn't take much for the revival of the Stephen Sondheim musical Anyone Can Whistle, opening Saturday at the Prince Music Theater, to go more smoothly than the original production did at its pre-Broadway preview here in 1964.

If neither of the lead actresses gets so exasperated with the director that she considers walking out (as Angela Lansbury said she was ready to do over disagreements with Arthur Laurents); if the audience doesn't boo the show; if the leading man doesn't lose his singing voice (as Harry Guardino did); if a supporting actor doesn't die toward the end of the run and... well, that's how it went 41 years ago at the Forrest Theatre.

One particularly unpleasant turn of events the Prince production won't have to worry about is a dancer sailing into the orchestra pit and landing on a bass saxophone player, who is taken to the hospital and dies of a heart attack. In the revival's concert configuration, the orchestra is onstage, playing behind the costumed cast members as they act out the scenes and sing the score.
After all this old woe, not to mention the frantic changes that were made in the original show and the constant arguments among creators and producers - later in New York, Laurents, who also wrote the book, and producer Kermit Bloomgarden actually got into a brief fistfight - you probably want to hear that the musical overcame everything and went on to become a huge Broadway hit.

Sorry to be a killjoy, but after receiving reviews that were no better, and some much worse, than in Philadelphia, Anyone Can Whistle closed after just nine performances.

So why revive it?

"The rationale for presenting it is the score... . People are coming because they know Steve Sondheim wrote the score," says Charles Gilbert, who is directing the Prince production.

Despite Anyone Can Whistle's negligible run, a cast album was made and the score has become a favorite with admirers of Sondheim - at 75, probably still Broadway's most influential composer.

Even though the often difficult, complicated music and edgy, literate lyrics aren't every musical lover's ticket, Gilbert sees Anyone Can Whistle as a big step in Sondheim's development. When he wrote the musical, Sondheim had already made a name as lyricist for West Side Story and Gypsy; he had also just established himself as a successful composer-lyricist on A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, which the year before had taken the Tony for best musical.

With the more offbeat Whistle, Gilbert says, "You see him stretch his artistic legs in a way that prefigures things that show up in a lot of his subsequent shows. It seems like he is deliberately trying to pack into the musical all his ideas and his tricks... that after having worked with Leonard Bernstein [West Side Story] and Jule Styne [Gypsy], he's now writing his own stuff.

"The score is dense and full of surprises and unusual things musically." Gilbert added that the Prince is producing the work with an 18-piece orchestra, larger than the typical ensemble used today and just two shy of the number in the original production.
Sondheim declined to be interviewed for this story. But Gilbert, who has been acquainted with the composer since Sondheim asked permission to use an idea of his for a show that Sondheim turned into the 1991 musical Assassins, confirms what Sondheim has said elsewhere: that he has conflicting feelings about Anyone Can Whistle. In Sondheim & Company (which provides the details of the musical's Philadelphia preview), author Craig Zadan writes that Sondheim was proud of his score, but quotes the composer extensively on what he considered problems with the book.

A wide-ranging satire of society couched in a kooky story, the Laurents book bothered critics as well. The New York Times said it lacked imagination and wit, and a Philadelphia critic wrote it "hasn't got a clear idea of what it wants to do or even what direction it means to take."

The musical's setting is a small, bankrupt town run by a corrupt mayor, who stages a fake miracle - a rock spouting water - to promote tourism. To demonstrate the water's healing power, the inmates of the local asylum are brought to partake of it. They escape, mix with the townspeople, and amid the ensuing chaos a romance blossoms between a nurse at the hospital and a man who claims to be a psychiatrist.

Although Gilbert thinks the book has worth, he acknowledges its problems. "They were trying to accomplish a lot of things, and there were several different styles and tones all tacked into the same work," he says. "There is stuff that is very broad and political, and there's stuff that is romantic and sentimental. Sometimes it doesn't seem like the same show."

Gilbert sees the story primarily as an attack on the conservative, conforming attitudes of the 1950s, which were beginning to change when Laurents wrote the book. As such, the show is ahead of its time, and in Gilbert's view the message is pertinent today. "There are still a large group of people who believe that everyone should believe the same things and act the same way," he says.

Even if the story of Anyone Can Whistle doesn't grab the Prince audience, Gilbert is certain that the score will. In fact, he's confident that those seeing his production will enjoy it more than those who attended the previews in 1964: "I'll risk being immodest and say it will be better than it originally sounded."

In addition to the orchestra, Gilbert says, his show will have better singers. The three lead performers 41 years ago, Lansbury, Guardino and Lee Remick, Gilbert points out, were movie actors appearing in their first musicals. Only Lansbury, who went on to star in and win Tony Awards for Mame and Sondheim's Sweeney Todd, proved adept enough to thrive in the form. "Both Lee Remick and Harry Guardino are pretty vocally shaky," Gilbert says.

The three principals in the Prince production, Jane Summerhays, Chuck Wagner and Crista Moore, are experienced Broadway musical performers. "I think they're a cut above [those on] either of the recordings," said Gilbert, referring to a CD made at a benefit concert version of the musical performed in 1994 at Carnegie Hall. "I'm sure it will be very musically satisfying."

PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER REVIEW
Posted on Wed, Feb. 02, 2005

'Whistle' a musical with a half-life
By Douglas J. Keating
Inquirer Theater Critic

Part of the Prince Music Theater's mission is to present musicals of the past that have been rarely, if ever, revived, but which the theater believes deserve to be seen and heard. By that measure, Anyone Can Whistle is half-deserving: The Stephen Sondheim score is well worth rediscovering, while the Arthur Laurents book is just as worthy of the obscurity the show has suffered.

The 1964 musical was the second show for which Sondheim wrote both lyrics and music; A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum was the first. Unlike that comic hit, Whistle displays a composer - who was to become one of the 20th century's most significant Broadway creators - abandoning the melodic, accessible Broadway score for his distinctive style of challenging, complex, jagged-edge music.

When it debuted on Broadway after a troubled preview engagement in Philadelphia, Anyone Can Whistle received largely negative reviews and closed after nine performances. Much of the criticism concerned the book, a mixture of political and social satire. Few critics thought that either the separate components or the combination of them into a whole worked, and four decades later that is still the case.

Set in a small town with a corrupt government and an "asylum for the socially pressured," Laurent's story takes not very effective shots at such already-pierced targets as politicians, religion and social conformity. But his main point also sounds familiar: Are those whom society deems crazy any more mad than so-called normal people?
That is illustrated by having the asylum inmates escape and mingle with the townspeople (represented by the audience) so thoroughly that they can't be sorted out.

The unoriginal, bland material isn't helped by director Charles Gilbert's approach. While most of the characters - the mayor, her corrupt aides, and the "cookies" (the inmates of the asylum referred to as the Cookie Jar) - are presented as cartoons, the lovers - Hapgood, a man who claims to be a psychiatrist, and Fay Apple, the head nurse at the asylum - are normal, musical-comedy types. Neither Whistle's silliness nor romance make much of an impression.

Although Gilbert doesn't exactly downplay the story, the concert-style staging that has the actors performing with a minimum of props in front of a large orchestra emphasizes the worthwhile. Orchestrally, Sondheim's score, played by an excellent 17-piece ensemble, has a marvelous presence. The vocal component is not as strong, yet the singing is more than competent, with numbers that have become established in the Sondheim lexicon - "Anyone Can Whistle," "Everybody Says Don't," "There Won't Be Trumpets" and "With So Little to Be Sure Of" - getting their full, if not exemplary, due.

Broadway singer and actress Crista Moore rehearsed the part of Nurse Apple but became ill and dropped out of the show. She has been replaced by University of the Arts senior Taryn Cagnina, a talented young singer who learned the part in two days and does remarkably well by it.

Fay's love interest, Hapgood, is portrayed by Chuck Wagner, who brings a big voice and expansive personality to his pleasing performance. The third experienced Broadway performer in the cast, Jane Summerhays, sings and acts the part of the town's villainous mayor with comic energy.

Anyone Can Whistle
Music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, book by Arthur Laurents, directed by Charles Gilbert, music direction by Sam Davis, lighting by Christine Griffith, costumes by Stephanie Krause, sound by Nick Kourtides.
The cast: Chuck Wagner, Jane Summerhays, Taryn Cagnina (understudy appearing for Crista Moore), Todd Waddington, Jim Bergwall, Charles McCloskey, Doug Anderson, others.
Playing at: Prince Music Theater, 1412 Chestnut St., through Sunday. Tickets are $30-$52. Information: 215-569-9700 or www.princemusictheater.org.

Contact theater critic Douglas J. Keating at 215-854-5609 or dkeating@phillynews.com. Read his recent work at http://go.philly.com/dougkeating.

There Will Be Trumpets: Revision of Groundbreaking Anyone Can Whistle Gets Philly Concert Staging
By Kenneth Jones
January 26, 2005

Anyone Can Whistle, that seminal experimental 1964 musical
comedy by composer-lyricist Stephen Sondheim and librettist Arthur
Laurents, made an impression on the composer-dramatist-director Charles
Gilbert, who is staging a concert version of the show Jan. 26-Feb. 6 in
Philadelphia.A Broadway flop about a small town, a corrupt mayoress and
her cronies, a local mental hospital, a plucky nurse and an unlikely hero,
the show has lived on via its treasured cast album, a later concert cast
album and (less widely known) regional theatre productions.

Fans of theatre musical recognize two, or maybe three, songs
from the show - the title tune, "There Won't Be Trumpets" (cut from the
1964 run) and "With So Little to Be Sure Of."

Angry, comic, satiric and somewhat absurdist, it took
scattershot aim at government, psychiatry, war, politics, conformity and
romantic ideals.

"I was an undergraduate student back in the early '70s and I
heard that album," Gilbert told Playbill.com. "When they got to the end of
the interrogation scene and everything suddenly got quiet, and Harry
Guardino said, 'You are all mad,' and there was this really crazy music, I
thought - this is it, this musical was made for me!"

What explains the cult status of the show?

"I think all artists experience themselves as sort of misfits
in society and they see the world as kind of crazy, even though they know
the world around them views them as crazy," Gilbert said. "I think that
was the thing that hooked me on it initially. And I've dreamed of being
able to stage the show ever since then. Literally. I used to put the LP on
and imagine in my head what it would look like. So this is the realization
of a 30-year-old dream for me to do it on stage."

Philadelphian Gilbert, who wrote the 1979 musical Assassins,
which inspired Sondheim to write his own musical on the same subject, is
staging the revised 2003 two-act version of the once-three-act musical. In
late 2002, Sondheim and Laurents approved changes for revivals that were
presented in early 2003 in Los Angeles and England. For the record, a song
called "There's Always a Woman" is not part of this staging, but "There
Won't Be Trumpets" will be.

Prince Music Theater - which staged Gilbert and Albert
Innaurato's musical, Gemini in 2004 - is producing the concert production.
Crista Moore (as Nurse Fay Apple), Jane Summerhays (as Mayoress Cora
Hoover Hooper) and Chuck Wagner (as Dr. Hapgood) headline the staging,
which represents the entire show (libretto, too) rather than just the
songs. Lee Remick, Angela Lansbury and Harry Guardino originated the
respective roles.

"It came at a point in my professional life when I was just
awakening to the artistic possibilities of the musical theatre," Gilbert
said. "Sondheim's work in general and Anyone Can Whistle in particular
really pointed me in a direction that I've followed for the last 30
years."

Opening is Jan. 29.

*

Sam Davis (a Broadway pianist and conductor and himself a
Jonathan Larson Award-wining music theatre composer) will serve as musical
director.

The production includes a cast of 19, including Jim Bergwall
(Controller Schub), Doug Anderson (Treasurer Cooley), Charles McCloskey
(Chief of Police Magruder), Todd Waddington (Narrator/Dr. Detmold et al.),
Joilet Harris (Cookies' Nurse), Brett Abernathy, Sharon Alexander, Billy
Bustamante, Amanda Harper, Matt Hultgren, Melissa Kolczynski, Jarrod
Lentz, Kathryn Lyles, Nancie Sanderson, Robert Tucker and Copeland
Woodruff.

Anyone Can Whistle is "a multi-themed musical set in the
fictional town of Hooperville," a bankrupt town trying to pull itself from
ruins, where the only solvent institution is the local mental hospital,
known as The Cookie Jar, according to the Prince, the resident Philly
troupe devoted exclusively to musicals. This marks the first Sondheim show
at the theatre named for longtime Sondheim collaborator Harold Prince.

In the show, the corrupt Mayoress Cora Hoover Hooper (Jane
Summerhays) and her council develop a scheme to stage a miracle in order
to drum up business and tourists. When mental-asylum nurse Faye Apple
(Moore) and the suspect psychiatrist J. Bowden Hapgood (Wagner) realize
the council's scheme, they try and expose them for the charlatans they
are, only to discover that the insane are not just in the asylum, but all
around them.

"In the end, it's the rare triumph of the few over the many,
and how individual integrity can be maintained in a conformist - albeit
nutty - society," according to Prince Theater notes.

Moore was Tony Award nominated for the Tyne Daly revival of
Gypsy and for Big and Summerhays was Tony nommed for Me and My Girl.
Wagner is a veteran of Broadway's original Into the Woods.

The orchestra of 20 will feature an accordion and a string
section made up of only cellos.

Anyone Can Whistle was revived in a starry concert benefit
that was recorded in 1995. Madeline Kahn played Cora, Bernadette Peters
was Faye. Laurents worked on a revision of the show that played London in
early 2003 and made its U.S. debut around the same time, in a tiny Los
Angeles production that starred Ruth Williamson. It's that version that's
licensed.

Tickets range $24-$52. Performances play Tuesdays and
Wednesdays at 7 PM, Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays at 8 PM and matinees
Saturdays at 2 PM and Sundays at 3 PM.

For more information, call Prince Music Theater at (215)
569-9700 or visit www.princemusictheater.org.

*

The February 2003 staging in L.A. was billed as the "U.S.
premiere of the first sanctioned revision of the original 1964 Broadway
musical, approved by Arthur Laurents and Stephen Sondheim," and offered a
newly organized two-act script (rather than the original three) that was
also used in London production of the show that opened in January 2003
under the direction of Laurents.

*

According to his website, www.chasgilbert.com, "composer,
lyricist and dramatist Charles Gilbert is a writer, director, composer and
educator who specializes in the musical theatre. Currently associate
professor and head of the musical theatre program at The University of the
Arts in Philadelphia, Gilbert has worked with National Music Theater
Network, Prince Music Theater (formerly the American Music Theater
Festival), Gretna Theater, Delaware Theater Company, Opera Delaware,
Covered Bridge Theater and other professional theatres as director or
musical director for a variety of musical productions.

"Among his credits as a writer and composer is the 1979
musical Assassins, source of the idea for the Stephen Sondheim musical
which premiered in New York in 1991.

His musical B.G.D.F. was seen in New York in 1983 in a
showcase starring Gregg Edelman. His children's musical, A Is for
Anything, commissioned by the Delaware Institute for the Arts in
Education, has been performed nearly a hundred times for thousands of
children in Pennsylvania, New York and Delaware, and was selected as a
finalist in the Buxton Quest for New Musicals in 1992. His cabaret revue,
Watch The Birdie, was performed at Don't Tell Mama in New York and The
Actors Center in Philadelphia in 1993, and a revised version was presented
at the Philadelphia Arts Banks and the Douglas Fairbanks Theater in 1998."

Gilbert holds an MFA in directing from Carnegie Mellon
University and is a former member of the BMI-Lehman Engel Musical Theatre
Workshop.

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The Show Mustn't Go On
by David Anthony Fox
"City Paper"

Anyone Can Whistle is a musical about a miracle and there was a miracle of
sorts in the Prince Music Theater production: That it got on at all. A
wicked flu swept through the cast, reportedly afflicting most of the
leads, and actually felling one of them - read on for more details.

What is not miraculous, I'm afraid, is the show itself. It's one of many
that pose a perpetual problem for theater fans: What do you do with a
musical that has a heavenly score anchored to an earthbound book? More
often than not, it's a bad script (rather than bad songs) that kills a
musical, and few ended up deader than Anyone Can Whistle, a 1964 show that
had nine official Broadway performances and then shut down.

Ah, but Whistle has a score by Stephen Sondheim, who is almost universally
regarded as the finest composer and lyricist of our time. And Sondheim's
fans are committed to finding victory within every apparent defeat. Over
the years, Whistle has gained cult status. With a score this good, how bad
can it really be?

Thanks to the Prince, we know: Heaven's Gate bad. Wreck-of-the-Hesperus
bad.

OK, that's not fair. It is a really good score. The wistful title song is,
justifiably, a favorite of cabaret performers, and there's a soaring love
duet ("With So Little To Be Sure Of"); an ironic, Vegas-y opening number
("Me And My Town"); and a couple of rousing anthems ("There Won't Be
Trumpets," "Everybody Says Don't") that are equally good. Some complex
ensembles remind us that, even in Sondheim's early days, he was thinking
out of the box.

But if Whistle's score is much better than most, the book, by respected
playwright Arthur Laurents, is much worse. A plot summary would waste
everybody's time, so I'll say only that there's a crooked city government
led by an evil mayor (Cora); a mental institution full of lunatics who
are, at various times, running around town or behind bars; a romantically
linked nurse (Fay) and psychiatrist (Hapgood) who care for the crazies
(but seem to have some screws loose themselves); and, since this
apparently isn't enough, a manufactured Lourdes-like miracle - water
flowing in a formerly dry gulch - that is intended to generate visitors
bringing money.

You could probably make sense of the plot if you tried, but I doubt you
could find anything to care about in the characters, all drawn in
cartoonishly bold strokes. What I take away from Whistle is that Laurents
is browbeating us with two countercultural ideas (it was the '60s, after
all): 1. Authority is bad; and 2. Crazy people are often saner than sane
people (this tiresome novelty was put forth several months before in One
Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest). Both ideas were probably fatuous then; they
certainly are hopelessly dated now.

It's irresistible to paraphrase the narrator's opening line: "Welcome to a
show so broke only a miracle could save it."

Now about that miracle. Crista Moore (Fay) was sick enough to miss opening
night, and critics were asked to come back. As it happens, I was there,
and Moore's understudy, Taryn Cagnina, gave what mysteriously seemed to be
the best (and best-rehearsed) performance of the evening, dazzling in her
most difficult number, "See What It Gets You." Days later, it was
announced that Moore was not coming back, and it seemed like Cagnina would
get a well-deserved break.

So much for good luck. On Thursday, when I attended "officially," Cagnina
herself was ill. She was replaced by two young actresses: Kathryn Lyles in
Act I and Amanda Harper in Act II, both of whom worked with scripts and
music stands. The audience was told about this by leading man Chuck Wagner
(Hapgood), who handled it with such bonhomie we enjoyed the adventure.
(Reportedly, Wagner was equally gallant offstage, helping all three Fays.)

Obviously, we weren't seeing the show under proper circumstances, but even
so, I'd have to say that Charles Gilbert's direction was too broad,
exacerbating the flaws of Laurents' script. Illness may explain the vocal
indisposition of Jane Summerhays (Cora), but not her amateurish
overacting. In the plus column, Wagner was terrific, the essence of
professionalism.

Best of all, we had a chance to glimpse three talented newcomers as Fay,
all of them with individual virtues. Cagnina was the most polished across
the board. Lyles had a special éclat in "Come Play Wiz Me." Harper's upper
register really shimmered in "With So Little To Be Sure Of." I'll look
forward to seeing all of them again (though perhaps not in the same role).

ANYONE CAN WHISTLE Feb. 3, Prince Music Theater, 1412 Chestnut St., 215-
569-9700

Talkin' Broadway Review
Tim Dunleavy

For almost as long as I've been a fan of musicals, I've been a fan of Anyone Can Whistle. When I was a teenager I heard a broadcast on public radio that featured a recording of Stephen Sondheim singing the hauntingly beautiful title number from this 1964 show. I was immediately enthralled by it. I couldn't believe how much Sondheim
was able to say about the human condition in a sparse, two-minute ballad.

Not long after that I checked out the record section of my local library and found it only had two or three Broadway cast albums - but one of them was Anyone Can Whistle. I played it several times, and even though some of the songs were puzzling, I found the whole album fascinating. Yet one question hung over me whenever I listened to it: How could a show with songs as good as this be such a flop on Broadway, closing after only nine performances?

Now, two decades after I first heard the score, and four decades after the show's debut, I've finally had the chance to see Anyone Can Whistle onstage, thanks to its new production at the Prince Music Theater. And now I know why the original production closed so quickly: It's a lousy show. Not a horrible show, by any means - it's
a show with a lot of great ideas and a lot of moments that made me smile. But the book - a cynical satire of society's norms of conformity, written by Arthur Laurents - never quite works. And the stodgy, clunky production at the Prince will do nothing to improve its reputation.

The show opens with Cora Hoover Hooper, mayor of the heartland hamlet of Hooperville, looking to do anything she can to rescue her town from bankruptcy and restore its reputation (and her political career). Her aides come up with a sure-fire plan: staging a fake miracle (making water seem to spring from a rock by hiding a pump under it). They charge admission to the "miraculous" fountain, but when Nurse Fay Apple shows up with a group of her patients from the local mental asylum who want to be cured by the waters, things go awry. The patients escape into the populace (and into the theater audience!), and it's up to the city officials and the psychiatrists to determine which people are sane and which should be locked up.

Assistance soon arrives in the person of J. Bowden Hapgood, of whom one of the other characters says, "If he weren't a psychiatrist, I would swear he knows what he's doing." Hapgood's plan to determine which people are the patients doesn't help - he separates everyone into either "Group A" or "Group One," and there's no way to tell which group is crazy and which is, well, like the rest of us. After all, aren't we all a little ... well, you know.

This plot has the makings of a hilarious poke in society's eye. But most of Laurents' jokes fall flat, and they make the same obvious points over and over again. When the digs at our concepts of sanity get tiresome, Laurents has more points to make about capitalism, politics, McCarthyism and way too many other targets. Narrowing the
focus - or giving us more characters we could care about, rather than cartoonish symbols - would have helped a lot.

The Prince's production is directed by Charles Gilbert, a longtime Sondheim associate whose 1978 show Assassins inspired Sondheim to write a show on the same subject. (Gilbert also co-wrote the Prince's disappointing Gemini, the Musical earlier this season.) The decision to include an onstage, 18-piece orchestra (well-conducted by Sam Davis) was a good one, but that is the only staging decision here that helps the show.

Things start out on a bad foot in the opening number, "Me and My Town." Jane Summerhays brings a nice comic touch to her role as the mayor, but the number surrounds her with three sidekicks who look uncomfortable and move like they'd just learned the dance steps five minutes before the show. Later in act one, Nurse Fay does her big number, "There Won't Be Trumpets," standing completely still at one side of the stage, robbing it of any excitement. She and Hapgood sing other songs ("Everybody Says Don't," "See What It Gets You" and the title tune) with a little more movement than that, but not much. Act two brings a long ballet, "The Cookie Chase," in which the patients are captured one by one and brought back to the mental ward - but there's no wit at all, and everyone goes through the motions so lazily that the whole number runs out of steam.

Who is responsible for such horrible choreography? Beats me - there is no choreographer credited in the program.

As Hapgood, Chuck Wagner delivers the show's best performance. He seems to delight in the absurdities of his character, and his voice is strong and clear. He delivers "Everybody Says Don't" and "With So Little To Be Sure Of" with a lot of gusto. At the performance I attended (and for many of the performances in the run), leading lady Crista Moore was out sick, and the role of Fay Apple was played by Taryn Cagnina, a senior at the University of
the Arts. Cagnina reportedly learned the part on short notice last week and should be commended for jumping in to such a big role. Unfortunately, she's in way over her head. Her singing voice is tentative; she sometimes sings behind the beat, and never holds high, long notes as long as she should. Her speaking voice is flat and uninteresting as well. Cagnina does come to life late in act one, during scenes in which Fay Apple puts on a red wig, a tight red dress and a French accent to pose as "Ze Lady from Lourdes"; Cagnina seems to be having fun with the disguise, and her love scenes with Wagner have a nice sparkle. But when she takes off the wig, she takes off the accent, too, and her performance becomes dreary and monotonous again.

The production has almost no sets; the only major piece of scenery is the ornate gate to the asylum, which is lowered on wires from the rafters. Those wires kept shaking for most of the night, making the gates shake with them. It was a horrible distraction.

Fortunately, almost none of this gets in the way of enjoying Sondheim's score, which is one of his most adventurous and entertaining. He manages to mix together tender ballads like "With So Little to Be Sure Of" and thrilling marches like "A Parade in Town." There are also two long, audacious set pieces - "Simple" and "The Cookie Chase." Each lasts around 10 minutes and combines exciting melodies with harsh dissonance, foreshadowing Sondheim's breakthrough musicals of the 1970s. And then there is the inventive wordplay which has become one of his trademarks, already in full bloom this early in his career.

However, all of that is displayed to much better effect on the original cast album, available on CD. This production only improves on that album in one way: by giving us Chuck Wagner, a leading man with a much better voice than original star Harry Guardino. Unless you're a diehard fan of Wagner, you'll be better off buying the CD than seeing Anyone Can Whistle onstage and experiencing a heartbreaking disappointment.

Anyone Can Whistle runs through Sunday, February 6. Ticket prices range from $30 to $52 and student tickets are $24 and may be purchased by calling the Prince Music Theater box office at 215-569-9700, in person at 1412 Chestnut Street in Philadelphia, or online at www.princemusictheater.org.

Book by Arthur Laurents
Music and Lyrics by Stephen Sondheim
Directed by Charles Gilbert
Music Director ... Sam Davis
Costume Design... Stephanie Krause
Lighting Design... Christine Griffith
Sound Design... Nick Kourtides
Casting Director... Janet Foster
Production Stage Manger... Veronica Griego

CAST:
Todd Waddington... Narrator/Dr. Detmold
Joliet F. Harris... Nurse
Doug Anderson... Treasurer Cooley
Charles McCloskey... Chief of Police
Jim Bergwall... Comptroller Schub
Jane Summerhays... Cora Hoover Hooper
Crista Moore... Fay Apple
Chuck Wagner... J. Bowden Hapgood
Billy Bustamante... George/Cookie
Matthew Hultgren... John/Cookie
Kathryn Lyles... June/Cookie
Robert Tucker... Martin/Cookie
Cookies... Corbin Abernathy, Sharon Alexander, Amanda Harper, Melissa Kolczynski, Jarrod Lentz, Nancie Sanderson, Copeland Woodruff

-- Tim Dunleavy

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