Anyone Can Whistle Lyrics
- Act 1
- Prelude Act I
- I'm Like the Bluebird
- Me and My Town
- Miracle Song
- There Won't Be Trumpets
- Simple
- Act 2
- Entr'acte
- Hooray for Hapgood
- Come Play Wiz Me
- Anyone Can Whistle
- A Parade in Town
- Everybody Says Don't
- Act 3
- I've Got You To Lean On
- See What It Gets You
- The Cookie Chase
- With So Little to Be Sure Of
- Finale
Opening of the show was held in 1964, and its advertising was started back in 1961 in print. The Natives Are Restless – such was the working title of the musical, which, as we know, was later renamed to Anyone Can Whistle. Arthur Laurents directed the show, Stephen Sondheim wrote music and lyrics. As in 1962, the same throughout 1963, the expected opening of the musical was shifted because its production was delayed many times due of financial issues. Stephen Sondheim was in a rather gloomy mood, and he almost did not work, because money problems constantly prevailed over him. Despite the fact that he and Arthur Laurents developed 4 different musical these years and two of them successfully entered life – two more were postponed because of the uncertainty. But since they were quite purposeful personalities, they eventually collected the investments from 115 independent sources and gathered the required amount of USD 350.000 to run it.
Pre-Broadway shows were in Philadelphia in 1964, and the first presentation in March received feedbacks about the banality and complexity of show, as well as about the inability to understand the plot because of these difficulties. But the director did not consider it necessary to draw his attention to feedback. The show were constantly plagued with failures – the heart attack occurred one of the actors, Henry Lascoe, and he had to be replaced immediately; the main actress was unhappy staged (but she blossomed after replacing Henry); the composer found performances humiliating.
Broadway’s production was shut down after only 9 plays since the public took everything that happened extremely negative. Despite the complete failure of the music, the show received Tony nomination (for music). Bernadette Peters, who has starred in Annie Get Your Gun, played a role here in 1995, in the re-launch. Totally there were several more attempts to revive the musical, but it never went further and music turned out to be the most successful part and has survived several recordings on discs by Columbia.
Release date: 1964
Last Update:December, 02nd 2015