[NEohioPAL] Review of "Anyone Can Whistle" at Lakeland Civic Theatre

[Bob Abelman]

Lakeland's 'Anyone Can Whistle' is a beautiful mistake

 

Bob Abelman

 

News-Herald, Chagrin Valley Times, Solon Times,

The Morning Journal, Geauga Times Courier

Member, American Theatre Critics Association 

 

This review will appear in the News-Herald on 2/10/12

 

 

Director Martin Friedman offers fair warning in the playbill for "Anyone Can Whistle."  

 

He acknowledges that the show being staged at Lakeland Civic Theatre was a commercial flop, a critical disaster and, for composer/lyricist Stephen Sondheim and librettist Arthur Laurents, a devastating professional failure when produced on Broadway in 1964.

 

In its defense, "Anyone Can Whistle" opened with "Hello Dolly!" across the street and "Funny Girl" just a few blocks uptown.  These musicals were more conventional and star-studded than what Sondheim and Laurents had to offer in this early collaboration.  In fact, most Sondheim musicals have a difficult time finding an audience and a profit before the times catch up with his unorthodox vision and signature style.

 

The times never quite caught up with "Anyone Can Whistle."  It is one quirky and disconcerting bit of stage business.    

 

At its core, "Anyone Can Whistle" is a wild musical satire about political corruption.  As the play begins we are introduced to the delightfully despicable Mayor Cora Hoover Hooper, who has led her broken down town into bankruptcy with the help of a merry band of shady and incorrigible city workers.  We find them in desperate need of a miracle, which they then manufacture in order to attract tourists to the town.

 

So far, so good.  At this early juncture, Sondheim's music and lyrics are pleasant and recognizable interludes that channel his inner Gershwin in support of Laurents' witty storyline, social commentary, and off-kilter characters.  

 

Then things get increasingly bizarre.  

 

Amidst the rush of tourists, the inmates of a local insane asylum escape and merge with the paying customers.  A psychiatrist named J. Bowden Hapgood surfaces out of nowhere to help distinguish between the sane and the insane which, we are repeatedly reminded and then reminded again, is an impossibility.  Hapgood then falls in love with Fay Apple, who was the nurse who let the inmates escape, and the two foil the evil plans of the Mayor and her gang.  

 

Meanwhile, Sondheim is off in his own world creating self-indulgent songs that give us a taste-but only a taste-of his burgeoning genius.  It is also at this point that the play becomes an exercise in one-upmanship between its two creators, as if the author was daring the composer to come up with something musical to complement his convoluted storyline, and the composer was daring the author to write something that could accommodate his eclectic and complex compositions.

 

The end result is a very discombobulated musical, but one that Friedman and his creative team miraculously turn into a wonderful ride.  They realize full well that this play is a beautiful mistake and run with it the way misguided children might run with scissors-full of carefree exhilaration and headlong into awaiting disaster.  

 

Leading the charge is Aimiee Collier as the egomaniacal Mayor.  Her acting and singing stretches the role to monumental proportions, for she milks every line and belts every high note to the balcony, and all of it is marvellous.

 

Trey Gilpin, Thomas Hill and Aaron Elersich, who play Hooper's henchmen as if they were animated by Warner Bros., chew the scenery without hesitation or an ounce of pride.  To varying degrees of success, members of a very game ensemble do likewise. They are all fearless and, consequently, a joy to behold in this context. 

 

Dan Folino and Katherine DeBoer, as J. Bowden Hapgood and Nurse Apple, offer a Master Class in managing Sondheim's complex harmonies and mouth-numbing lyrics with grace and charm.  They create immediately accessible characters amidst a population of ne're-do-wells, morons, and aimless inmates, which gives credibility to their relationship, realism to some of the inane things they are asked to say and do, and helps showcase their beautiful ballads.

 

To a large degree, the success of this production-and it is a success-lies with the 12-piece orchestra under Larry Goodpaster's direction, which brings fluidity and balance to a difficult score.  Trad A Burns' lighting design, along with Friedman's astute direction, gives much needed clarity and definition to what one can only imagine is a mess of a script.

  

Burns' set design-particularly the centrepiece miracle in the town square-is intriguing but tends to win the battle for space with Jennifer Justice's choreography.

 

By evening's end, it is obvious that all that is entertaining on the page has made it onto this stage.  The question theater-goers need to answer for themselves is if it is entertaining enough.

 

"Anyone Can Whistle" runs through February 19 at Lakeland Civic Theatre, 7700 Clocktower Drive, Kirtland.  For tickets, which are $7 to $15, call 440-525-7526.  
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.neohiopal.org/pipermail/neohiopal-neohiopal.org/attachments/20120206/53c489be/attachment-0003.htm>