Alex Young and Danny Lane in Anyone Can Whistle
(Picture: Danny With A Camera)Has anything dated as badly as 1960s zaniness? Except perhaps that decade’s hazy romanticisation of mental illness as a countercultural force, and the belief that women need to be “awakened”. Unfortunately, the first London revival of a Stephen Sondheim musical following his death last November is this 1964 dud which conflates all three. Georgie Rankcom’s oafish production, packed with pratfalls, mugging and forced hysteria, makes the show’s relative neglect over the decades seem entirely justified.
To be fair, the problem lies less with Sondheim’s music and lyrics than with Arthur Laurents’s book, which feels like it was bashed out in desperation hours before the first night. In a nameless, bankrupt American town, corrupt mayor Cora Hoover Hooper and her cronies fake the existence of a curative miracle spring to lure tourists.
