On Sondheim: An Opinionated Guide (12 page)

Thus the work presents its central principals: the Mayoress, the Nurse, the Hero. The last two, who have the love plot, were supposed to have been Barbra Streisand (who took
Funny Girl
instead) and the Australian Keith Michell, known on Broadway in the early 1960s as the comic-romantic lead of
Irma la Douce
and for one of the two key roles in Jean Anouilh’s
The Rehearsal
: French pieces, a silly-sexy musical and a very dark comedy. It suggests Michell’s versatility, and he was not only an ingratiating performer but, like Streisand, a singer of impact.

One wonders what might have happened had these two headed the cast, for in the end all three of
Whistle
’s leads went to Novelty Stars, unknown for work in musicals: Angela Lansbury,
^*
Lee Remick, and Harry Guardino. They fielded what we can call “Broadway voices,” with more personality than vocal tone (and Guardino got hoarse during the tryout and never recovered). But then, musical comedy has always got away with non-singing singers. It is operetta and the musical play—
The Student Prince
,
Carousel
,
Titanic
—that demand quasi-operatic voices.

And
Anyone Can Whistle
was pure musical comedy, pursuing a more or less nonsensical premise with the devil-may-care plotting favored in the 1920s and 1930s, in which crazy events lead on to more crazy events, filled with disguise and coincidence.
Whistle
has none of the archetypal beauty of
West Side Story
or
Gypsy
’s strict naturalism. It’s a loony show, filled with reckless shenanigans. If
Hair
(1967) was the hippy of musicals,
Whistle
was the
Saturday Night Live
.

The show did have a point of view. Arthur Laurents, the author of
Whistle
’s script (as well as those to
West Side Story
and
Gypsy
), never wrote about nothing. Still, he failed to anchor
Whistle
clearly. Its villains are cartoons while the heroine is shaded nicely but the hero is a mystery. He is smart and magnetic if nothing else, but he
is
nothing else. Keeping to musical comedy, think of “pal” Joey,
The Pajama Game
’s Sid Sorokin, the music man Harold Hill: men we understand. At one point,
Whistle
’s hero tells the Mayoress, “You’ve got the wrong man.” It’s the truest line in the show: everyone’s the wrong man, one way or another.

Bizarrely enough, that’s Laurents’ point. Society needs us all to be “right,” because then we’re easier to manage. To control. Historically, however, the American musical has always sided with the wrong men, from rogues to underdogs. It’s an essentially subversive form. So
Whistle
should have succeeded—but it lacked clarity. If we don’t know what the hero is for, at least tell us what he’s against. Ultimately,
Anyone Can Whistle
confused critics and public alike. After a ghastly three weeks before hostile tryout audiences in Philadelphia, the show opened in New York (on April 4, 1964) to extremely mixed notices, from keen praise (“A happy escapist evening”—
Journal-American
; “Breathtaking surprises”—
World Telegram & Sun
) to scathing rejection (“It’s unconstitutional to omit imagination and wit”—
New York Times
; “Forget it”—
Herald Tribune
). The run lasted 9 performances.

The worst problem was perhaps not the gnomic libretto but the terrible director: Arthur Laurents. He had directed on Broadway only twice before, first his own straight play
Invitation To a March
(with incidental music by Sondheim), then the Harold Rome musical
I Can Get It For You Wholesale
. On neither show was Laurents’ work distinguished—
Wholesale
’s excitement was generated by Barbra Streisand’s Broadway debut and by Herbert Ross’ staging of the numbers. It is worth noting that
Wholesale
’s producer, David Merrick, was willing to present
Anyone Can Whistle
but not if Laurents directed it. Sondheim says that Merrick was wary of the “egoistic self-indulgence” of playwright-directors, but Merrick occasionally let writers stage their own works, play (
Cactus Flower
) and musical (
Do Re Mi
) alike. Rather, it would appear that Merrick didn’t trust Laurents as a director, period. He never hired him after
Wholesale
—and among
Whistle
’s admirers it was once more Herbert Ross’ choreography (including the arrestingly fantastical “Cookie Chase” ballet) that justified the production. Indeed,
Whistle
’s dancing was a positive talking point for reviewers, even those who didn’t like the show as a whole.

Another problem lay in using Philadelphia as the tryout platform, for its public was notoriously resistant to offbeat material. With theatregoers bound to hate the show from the start, Sondheim and Laurents never got a fair assessment of where they might be erring. Still, the ending of
Whistle
’s first act, in those days almost invariably an amusing cliffhanger, to draw the public back after the intermission with a sense of anticipation, was, in this case, unfriendly. As the lights darkened on everyone but Guardino, he told the audience, “You are all mad.” Whereupon the rest of the cast appeared in theatre seats as if they were the audience, clapping and laughing hysterically—uncomprehendingly, really. It came off exactly as the authors had imagined it, which thrilled them—such special effects often don’t quite equal what the artists had envisioned.
Whistle
’s public, however, was not thrilled. They probably had the feeling that if they got this obscure joke they wouldn’t like it.

Well, that’s the price of leadership.
Anyone Can Whistle
was truly “ahead of its time,” in the familiar phrase. True, it honored musical-comedy tradition, as I’ve said, in its prankish plot; those old George Gershwin and Cole Porter shows are just as silly. However,
Whistle
did treat serious matters in a gladsome way—repressive authority, intolerance of anyone “different.” These were concerns of the day, yes, but they hadn’t yet found a secure place in musical comedy.

While tending these themes, however, the authors failed to define their two romantic leads, Remick and Guardino, with the traditional establishing number and character song. From, say,
Naughty Marietta
(1910) to
Thoroughly Modern Millie
(2002), the heroine needs to tell us who she is. Marietta’s first solo, the title song, reveals her rebellious nature in music of expansive charm; instantly, after her first few lines of dialogue, she has come to life. And Millie’s opener, “Not For the Life of Me,” goes into its refrain in, the score demands, “Hot Dixieland,” because this girl is sexy, ambitious, and surprising.

Unfortunately,
Anyone Can Whistle
skipped these field expedients. In
Sondheim & Co
., Herbert Ross caught exactly why the show was so innovative but so difficult: “It had no musical comedy symbols, which left the audience with few recognizable things, very few anchors … to hold on to.” Lee Remick did have a “what I’m like” solo—but it wasn’t a song. Rather, it was a ferocious speech with musical underscoring. If it had a title, it would be “NOT—THAT—WORD!,” and it was a marvelous flood of defiant statements about the Cookies and the “miracle” waters. But the public just wanted to know if the Nurse was waitin’ for her dearie or contemplating what might make her life loverly. The speech had such impact that it dwarfed Remick’s establishing song a few minutes later, the aforementioned “There Won’t Be Trumpets,” which is why it was cut. It’s a terrific number (revivals tend to reinstate it, and it was recorded for and released on the cast album) but, following “NOT—THAT—WORD!,” it felt like a second song in the same slot. It did give the audience an anchor—but only after the show had taken the audience out to sea in a storm.
^*

Of course, now that musicals in general are more sophisticated,
Whistle
poses no challenges. The book remains smug and cocksure, but the score carefully separates the lovers from the liars. Still, much of
Whistle
treats the difficulty in categorizing people, especially regarding who is sane and who insane. When Guardino, an alleged “doctor,” drew such distinctions among the townspeople, he divided them into Group A … and Group One. A villain on the Mayoress’ team asked, “But which group is what?,” and then warned Guardino, “Doctor, you’re not doing what we want you to!” Well, of course he isn’t:
you’ve got the wrong man
. And all of this occurs in a fifteen-minute musical scene, “Simple,” using dialogue, orchestral punctuation, and song in a sort of mini-opera, something unusual, to suit the unusual “doctor.”

Conversely, the Mayoress’ numbers are pastiche recollections of various genres. Sondheim had written two of
Saturday Night
’s songs in the style of twenties ballads, but they were band-vocalist inserts, not character pieces. In
Whistle
, Sondheim limned the Mayoress to emphasize the politician’s artificiality through the very artifice of her song spots—specialty numbers that strike poses using show-biz clues. The show’s First Number, “Me and My Town,” presented Lansbury in a Diva and Her Boys act complete with a fast middle section made of hand claps and call-and-response outcries. This format probably reached its apex in Judy Garland’s spot in MGM’s 1946 revue film
The Ziegfeld Follies
, “A Great Lady Has an Interview” (remember, Sondheim logged his most impressionable moviegoing in the 1940s), and was still entertainment lingua franca in 1964. It may have contributed to the feeling that
Whistle
was arch and precious, but it spoke to the public in terms it could readily absorb, and explains why the only thing the Philadelphians seemed to like about the show was Lansbury.

Similarly, the “Miracle Song,” on the revelation of the town’s “healing” waters, suggested a Frank Loesser gospel raveup, in the manner of
Guys and Dolls
’ “Sit Down, You’re Rockin’ the Boat” and
How To Succeed
’s “The Brotherhood Of Man.” Most creative of all in
Whistle
is “I’ve Got You To Lean On,” for the Mayoress and her three henchmen and something like Jule Styne writing in the Cole Porter manner. Feeling limited by all this referencing of song tropes, Lansbury asked Sondheim to give the Mayoress something personal, with feeling. Doesn’t our Steve want his show to ring with human truth, with a core of frailty, honesty, need? Besides, Lansbury concluded, “[Lee] has five songs and [I] have only four.”

It’s “as good a reason to write a song as any,” Sondheim dryly observes, recalling the moment in
Finishing the Hat
. He provided “A Parade in Town,” which does indeed expand the Mayoress’ ID beyond her membership in the one per cent. The song is intercut with an actual parade, as Guardino is carried aloft by an exuberant crowd, and the Mayoress’ forlorn solo leaves us uncertain whether she’s envious of his popularity or simply lonely, for her music stalks the celebrants with a heavy heart. It’s a curious moment in an already extremely curious show; perhaps
Whistle
’s trouble lies in its trying to do too much in one evening.

It certainly did texture Remick’s and Guardino’s parts. The Boy Meets Girl is supposed to be the easiest element in a musical, but
Whistle
’s “doctor” and Nurse are puzzles. Authors can’t get through an entire show on “You’ve got the wrong man”—we have to know
something
about him or we can’t connect the dots. Remick’s Nurse, too, was elusive. She and Guardino had a flirtation duet, “Come Play Wiz Me,” in which the Nurse was disguised as the Lady from Lourdes (another town boasting of miracle healings). A few lines were in French—translated by a subtitle screen that sometimes didn’t work properly—and Remick then went into an erotic dance with the Mayoress’ four boys. It was an intriguing idea, playing on the notion that the inhibited Nurse—she’s the one who, unlike anyone else, can’t whistle—gets comfortable with sex (in other words, well adjusted in general) only when she’s pretending to be somebody else. Still, it must have confused spectators.

Even Sondheim fans are confused by
Whistle
’s title song, a tender lament by one who can’t “lower my guard.” They fondly think of this as Sondheim’s most personal number, a revelation he inadvertently affirmed by singling it out as his performance piece in one of the first Sondheim tribute concerts, in 1973. However, writing a theme song for an introvert doesn’t mean you are one.

^*
Whistle
gave Lansbury her Big Break after twenty years in film. Jerry Herman saw
Whistle
, and he kept Lansbury in mind when, two years later,
Mame
was casting and Dolores Gray heavily favored for the lead. Herman held out for Lansbury, who made a sensation and remained one of the biggest of headliners—though it was
Murder, She Wrote
, on television, that made Lansbury a household name.