February 10-16, 2005

theater

The Show Mustn't Go On

by David Anthony Fox

Anyone Can Whistle is a musical about a miracle and there was a miracle of sorts in the Prince Music Theater production: That it got on at all. A wicked flu swept through the cast, reportedly afflicting most of the leads, and actually felling one of them — read on for more details.

What is not miraculous, I'm afraid, is the show itself. It's one of many that pose a perpetual problem for theater fans: What do you do with a musical that has a heavenly score anchored to an earthbound book? More often than not, it's a bad script (rather than bad songs) that kills a musical, and few ended up deader than Anyone Can Whistle, a 1964 show that had nine official Broadway performances and then shut down.

Ah, but Whistle has a score by Stephen Sondheim, who is almost universally regarded as the finest composer and lyricist of our time. And Sondheim's fans are committed to finding victory within every apparent defeat. Over the years, Whistle has gained cult status. With a score this good, how bad can it really be?

Thanks to the Prince, we know: Heaven's Gate bad. Wreck-of-the-Hesperus bad.

OK, that's not fair. It is a really good score. The wistful title song is, justifiably, a favorite of cabaret performers, and there's a soaring love duet ("With So Little To Be Sure Of"); an ironic, Vegas-y opening number ("Me And My Town"); and a couple of rousing anthems ("There Won't Be Trumpets," "Everybody Says Don't") that are equally good. Some complex ensembles remind us that, even in Sondheim's early days, he was thinking out of the box.

But if Whistle's score is much better than most, the book, by respected playwright Arthur Laurents, is much worse. A plot summary would waste everybody's time, so I'll say only that there's a crooked city government led by an evil mayor (Cora); a mental institution full of lunatics who are, at various times, running around town or behind bars; a romantically linked nurse (Fay) and psychiatrist (Hapgood) who care for the crazies (but seem to have some screws loose themselves); and, since this apparently isn't enough, a manufactured Lourdes-like miracle — water flowing in a formerly dry gulch — that is intended to generate visitors bringing money.

You could probably make sense of the plot if you tried, but I doubt you could find anything to care about in the characters, all drawn in cartoonishly bold strokes. What I take away from Whistle is that Laurents is browbeating us with two countercultural ideas (it was the '60s, after all): 1. Authority is bad; and 2. Crazy people are often saner than sane people (this tiresome novelty was put forth several months before in One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest). Both ideas were probably fatuous then; they certainly are hopelessly dated now.

It's irresistible to paraphrase the narrator's opening line: "Welcome to a show so broke only a miracle could save it."

Now about that miracle. Crista Moore (Fay) was sick enough to miss opening night, and critics were asked to come back. As it happens, I was there, and Moore's understudy, Taryn Cagnina, gave what mysteriously seemed to be the best (and best-rehearsed) performance of the evening, dazzling in her most difficult number, "See What It Gets You." Days later, it was announced that Moore was not coming back, and it seemed like Cagnina would get a well-deserved break.

So much for good luck. On Thursday, when I attended "officially," Cagnina herself was ill. She was replaced by two young actresses: Kathryn Lyles in Act I and Amanda Harper in Act II, both of whom worked with scripts and music stands. The audience was told about this by leading man Chuck Wagner (Hapgood), who handled it with such bonhomie we enjoyed the adventure. (Reportedly, Wagner was equally gallant offstage, helping all three Fays.)

Obviously, we weren't seeing the show under proper circumstances, but even so, I'd have to say that Charles Gilbert's direction was too broad, exacerbating the flaws of Laurents' script. Illness may explain the vocal indisposition of Jane Summerhays (Cora), but not her amateurish overacting. In the plus column, Wagner was terrific, the essence of professionalism.

Best of all, we had a chance to glimpse three talented newcomers as Fay, all of them with individual virtues. Cagnina was the most polished across the board. Lyles had a special éclat in "Come Play Wiz Me." Harper's upper register really shimmered in "With So Little To Be Sure Of." I'll look forward to seeing all of them again (though perhaps not in the same role).

ANYONE CAN WHISTLE Feb. 3, Prince Music Theater, 1412 Chestnut St., 215- 569-9700