Stephen Sondheim, Angela Lansbury, Lee Remick - Anyone Can Whistle (1964 Original Broadway Cast)

Give credit (and thanks) to Goddard Lieberson and Columbia Records for preserving the original cast recording of Anyone Can Whistle despite a blink-and-you-missed-it run of nine performances in 1964. That's often blamed on the challenging and confusing book, which features a Mayoress (Angela Lansbury) whose town is economically depressed until the fortuitous arrival of an apparent miracle. Unfortunately, the resulting influx of tourists clashes with 49 patients (known as "cookies") from a local mental hospital led by nurse Fay Apple (Lee Remick) when a traveling physician named Hapgood (Harry Guardino) arrives to sort things out. The score is fascinating early Stephen Sondheim and includes numerous songs that have become staples of Sondheim song collections: "There Won't Be Trumpets," the gentle title tune, "A Parade in Town," "Everybody Says Don't," and "With So Little to Be Sure Of." Almost exactly 31 years later, Anyone Can Whistle was recorded as a gala benefit concert, with 20 additional minutes of music and dialogue, an all-star cast including Lansbury and Bernadette Peters, and the excitement of a live performance. For heart, though, it still doesn't measure up to the original cast recording. --David Horiuchi Amazon.com

Anyone Can Whistle CD by Chris G.

A terrific show. An excellent CD. Most of the songs are better than anything on Broadway today. It is a shame that it is the paying public that decides what will be a hit or a failure. Alot of the shows that the public makes hits are really bad just like TV shows. May 31, 2008

A superb remastering

The previous reviews have said pretty much all there is to be said about Anyone Can Whistle, its history, the performers etc. By now all musical theater enthusiasts will know about this show and know whether they like it or not. The musical itself is kind of difficult, certainly a bit snarley (not a surprise with Sondheim), certainly dark and frankly a bit convoluted. The score however is a gem and the performances by the OBC are legendary.

What I want to comment on is Columbia's remastering of the original material. The sound quality is phenominal, much brighter and clearer than the LP and first CD issues. The first CD issue added the cut "There won't be Trumpets" and it is still here. This go around they have restored all the missing snippets of the Cookie Ballet, which by my count consist of one variation and about 40-50 miscellaneous measures. There are still a few missing bits which you can find on the concert recording with Bernadette Peters and Madelyn Kahn. Then there are the 6 Sondheim tracks. There is a reason that he cut some of these numbers and changed others before production, because his later thoughts on them were better, but still they are interesting to hear once or twice. The sonic fidelity needs again to be mentioned. I heard things on the CD that I never heard on the LP or the one time I listened to the first CD issue. A first rate transfer. THANK YOU COLUMBIA FOR YOUR OUTSTANDING JOB. April 12, 2008

Gets Better and Better with repeated listenings

The first time I played this soundtrack, I found the lyrical content and subject matter off-putting, and the performances (save for the always great Angela Lansbury) to be servicable at best. Being a Sondheim fan however, I gave this sountrack a second chance. And then a third and fourth...tenth and many more to come. Anyone Can Whistle is now one of my favorites. It is very edgy. And very sharp around those edges. The music often reminds me of Prokofiev and a little even of Shostokovich. Repeated listenings helped me to see how the musical ideas develop. There are some beautiful moments of music that are a bit hidden by the lyrics being sung. And when I realized that the story was about just how insane and bad the Characters in this musical were, rather than indictment of society in general, I was able to digest the lyrics more easily. The extra tracks of Sondheim singing at the piano also do a great service to better understanding the score from the original soundtrack. Perhaps if Anyone Can Whistle had been better cast, it would have run longer. But again, if you are Sondheim fan, this is a must for your collection. October 30, 2007

Good score; rotten show

I wonder how many Sondheim fans have actually seen this dreadful show. Somewhere in the 90's I saw a revival in Los Angeles. While the performers could not hold a candle to those performing on the cast album, it was painfully clear that the show itself was tedious, overwrought and not half the fun that I'm sure was intended. In a number of post-mortems the show was referred to as "a bitter pill" or condescending and I couldn't agree more. Who's crazy and who isn't and calling the audience nuts, even if they've chosen to come and see your show, is a little much for anyone to take. I personally found the whole affair to be insufferable.

Taken on its own,however, the music on this album is wonderful and beautifully performed. I understand that Remick and Guardino were not as good vocally on stage as this album suggests but I guess it doesn't make much difference. They certainly sound fine here. Ultimately, the show is a true bomb but like a few others I could mention, the score on its own makes for enjoyable listening. August 17, 2007

COOKIE JAR

What a complex, unexpected, unwelcome show for 1960s Broadway! And how fascinating to hear it today thanks to the, as ever, fine Goddard Lieberson produced OBC Album; a prized museum piece.

Arthur Laurence (a McCarthy witch-hunt-victim) must have been embittered, eager to retaliate with a vengeance here; and his sophisticated, ever willing to innovate and experiment, young collaborator Stephen Sondheim backed him up with a (some of them, indeed bizarre!) mixed bag of musical numbers. The impetus ranges from Brecht, Offenbach, Viennese Operetta through the likes of Ionesco, Pinter to the more conventional (Me and My Town recalls the Marilyn & Boys "Heat Wave"; "Come Play Wiz Me", the saucy Sellers/Loren doctor song). All told, a Broadway musical imposing such adamant, incisive, lunatic angle on US executive corruption was then, indeed, audacious at all risks.

The core of this (then doomed) effort is the number called "Simple"... and simple it is not at all: an extended, frantic, absurd, sardonic ensemble-scene leading to the end-of-Act-One "you are all mad" idea where the audience were impelled to see themselves as reflected on a mirror, lights on the house, the actors on stage facing and applauding them. What would today audiences see? Do they acceed to (and welcome) experiment and innovation so much more nowadays, as Sondheim's later (comparable) opus, ASSASSINS finally and successfully evolved from 'Off' to 'On' Broadway stage?

Recording sessions must have been sweaty for Lieberson, for Sondheim, not the least for musical director Herbert Greene, as principal love couple struggled to comply with their pitch range, syncopations, machine-gun lyrics and proper voice technique as well as the required emotion. Lots of the latter abounds though, not unlike every original cast album recorded days after its premiere, this one recorded the day after the show folded! And quite a cookie chase it had been: sundry internal squabbles during previews; director Laurents' continual --desperate, stubborn-- re-stagings and cuts (like the marvelous "There's Always A Woman" which Kaye Ballard and Sally Mayes recently recorded beautifully in the album "Unsung Sondheim"); the quarrels between producers and creators (a fist-fight is legendary); an actor's death of heart attack during rehearsals... Whatever, the Sondheim Cult has proclaimed this album 'a must' and so it must be.

'Whistle' producers' later comments that neither Guardino or Remick could sing are exaggerated; flaws included, they could deliver a song with plenty of charisma. And a little less Sondheim tough, convoluted writing might have eased it all. Exquisite blue-eyed Lee Remick, whose acting talents rendered every word she sang so clearly defined and felt, couldn't cope with the syncopated vocal line in most of "There Won't Be Trumpets" but we can forgive her, after all, the song was cut for the premiere and, although recorded, also from the 1964 released vynil album. (Had they computer mixing and Pro-Tools facilities then, some of Remick's voice track could have easily been shifted to fit the orchestra; also some pitching repair would have delivered them all flawless.) Whatever, I never heard a more moving rendition of "Anyone Can Whistle" than Remick's (or Sondheim's own voice & piano bonus track demo). That Guardino couldn't utter "Everybody Says Don't" very fast was not such a sin then, as the world hadn't as yet experienced Sondheim's virtuoso speedy lyrics ("Getting Married Today" or the Seurat-inspired numbers for Patinkin were still in God's mind... let alone the Ballad of Czgolgosz.....) still, Guardino's singing is ripe, heavy-cigaretted and seducingly charming... The renderings of his songs in the 1995 Carnegie Hall Concert Revival sound epicene in comparison.

Last but not least, Angela Lansbury's debut in music theatre whose casting alone is worth cherishing this recording, where she coped bravely and astoundingly with the whole bravura, dazzling span of her material, introducing her distinct, bewitching, everlasting performance magic.

A Sondheim/Laurents flop well worth cherishing. January 31, 2007

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