Flopping on Broadway means nothing!
Just back from Sondheim’s Anyone can Whistle at the Southwark Playhouse .
This 1964 play was a Broadway flop, and is rarely revived, which may tell you more about American sensitivities (and management pusillanimity) than it does about the play. Yes, it is somewhat mad (it is about madness); yes it is full of argument and left-wing libertarian bias; yes it has only one well-known song (the title song) and yes it does put capitalism in a bad light (and anarcho-syndicalism or some close analogue, into a good one) – so you can readily see what the 1964 Broadway audience wouldn’t have liked; but this staging is excellent.
A fine cast (with good voices), taut direction and blocking on a narrow (4ft) runway stage running across the auditorium between two banks of seats allow the humour, and the ideas, through; with ‘mad’ characters of our age almost wholly endearing.
That the ‘badies’ are corrupt local government and the mayor, who has closed the factory which funds the town, and the goodies are well meaning sociopaths we now find endearing (and true to life?), that the singing and acting (particularly Alex Young as the Mayor, Jordan Broatch as Hapgood and Chrystine Symone as the Nurse) is polished and more than tuneful is a pleasure.
Overall, and despite its history, this production suggests that Anyone Can Whistle rightfully takes a place in the Sondheim canon.