There is much in Southwark Playhouse’s revival of Sondheim’s ‘Anyone Can Whistle’ to get confused about, but also plenty to enjoy.
12 April 2022
I am not generally a huge fan of 60s absurdism in theatre, mainly I think because having little idea of what is happening on stage offends some deep-seated need in me for a story to make sense.
So far as I could decipher, the story revolves around a small-town American mayor (played with enormous charisma by the vocally gifted Alex Young) who somehow engineers the miraculous but fraudulent emergence of water from a stone.
Keen to turn the town into a kind of Louisiana Lourdes, mayor Hooper, aided by Comptroller Schub, Treasurer Cooley, and Police Chief Magruder (splendidly camp turns by Danny Lane, Samuel Clifford, and Renan Teodoro) proclaims the fake spring to have mysterious curative powers.
Residents of the town’s lunatic asylum, known as ‘The Cookie Jar’, led by straight-laced Nurse Apple, line up at the spring for a cure. But the ‘Cookies’ are prevented from taking the waters by the mayor’s lackeys, and soon disperse into town, becoming indistinguishable from the townspeople, or ‘Pilgrims’. In his subsequent attempt to disentangle the sane from the insane, asylum director Dr Detmold is aided by a mysterious visiting Doctor by the name of J Bowden Hapgood.
At this point I rather lost the plot. Nurse Apple, in the form of mellifluous-voiced Chrystine Symone disappears, returning in short order as the ‘Lady From Lourdes’, a professional miracle inspector with an incomprehensible accent who is determined to debunk the town’s miracle spring. She soon seduces Hapgood and together they set about trying to free the ‘Cookies’ from renewed incarceration in the Cookie Jar.
That is about as far as my notes go. The best way I can describe the rest of the story is a kind of Dario Fo adaptation of a tome by 60s counter-culture hero, psychiatrist RD Laing, with a bunch of references to Ibsen. That makes it sound nuts, and it is, albeit in a good way.
One of the pleasures of not understanding what is going on in a show is that one can just ignore the plot and focus on the action. And there is very great deal to enjoy here. Georgie Rankcom’s brisk direction is packed full of droll visual humour. Cory Shipp’s costume design, all flairs, tie-dye, and bright colours, adds an authentically 60s feel to the show.
The enthusiastic cast are all eminently watchable, and the early Sondheim score has a couple of great songs in ‘There Won’t Be Trumpets’ and ‘Anyone Can Whistle’. There were plenty of convinced and vocal admirers of the show among the large contingent of gay men and off-duty thespians in the audience, a sign which can generally be taken as the educated afficionado’s mark of approval.
Some of act two’s philosophical dialogues between Hapgood and Nurse Apple drag on, but the duets are lovely, and Jordan Boatch plays the mysterious visitor with an assured lightness of touch.
Is the about anything? Perhaps the nature of belief in miracles and the fine line between sanity and madness. To be honest is does not really matter. All in all, it is great.
Director Georgie Rankcom
Musical Director Natalie Pound
Choreographer Lisa Stevens
Book Arthur Laurents
Music and Lyrics Stephen Sondheim
Cast
Kathryn Akin
Jordan Broatch
Samuel Clifford
Shane Convery
Teddy Hinde
Hana Ichijo
Danny Lane
Marisha Morgan
Chrystine Symone
Nathan Taylor
Renan Teodoro
Jensen Tudtud
Alex Young
Duration: 2 hours 20 mins. One interval.
Full Disclosure: I paid full box-office price for the ticket.
