Anyone Can Whistle, by Reboot Theatre

I don't want to change the world
I'm not looking for a new England
I'm just looking for another girl
- Billy Bragg

You say you want a revolution …
If you go carrying pictures of chairman Mao
You ain't gonna make it with anyone anyhow
- John Lennon

This, really, is the theme of Anyone Can Whistle, the vintage Sondheim show now playing at TOJ and produced by Reboot.

Reboot has been knocking out bangers for several seasons now. And this one takes it up yet another notch.

The publicity for the show, the director’s notes, and the reviews I’ve seen mention the show did poorly when it opened on Broadway in 1964. On the one hand, it’s hard to see why. On the other, it makes sense.

Briefly, it’s a satiric farce of small town USA, with a stranger coming to town a la The Music Man, and stirring up trouble for the mayor and her plans to market a phony miracle (water from a stone!) to save the town’s fortunes. There is a parallel plot involving the nurse at the local mental institution that the town calls “The Cookie Jar.” She is seeking justice and fair treatment for her patients. The tone is zany and wacky, in the manner of films like It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World, which was likely still playing in theaters at the time.

The show is a ball of fire, both in the music and in the book, which has received a lot of criticism, apparently. But to me the structure is great. Purely as a piece of theater, I don’t find any fault. The show has a point of view, and it drives it home while entertaining you all the way there.

Maybe it’s that the ball of fire burned a little too hot for America at the time. It mocks the political system just months after the assassination of John F. Kennedy. It intends to scramble the audience’s idea of who is crazy and who isn't. In one of my favorite sequences, it even mocks the national defense. The stranger quizzes the local Chief of Police, a former army officer (forgive my possible paraphrasing of the first line here):

Stranger: What is your duty?
Chief: To fight the enemy!
Stranger: Which enemy?
Chief: What day is it?

Catch 22, the novel, had just come out two years prior but we would not get to things like M*A*S*H and the film version of Catch 22 itself for another seven years or so, until a lot more of the Sixties had happened. Anyone Can Whistle was a little ahead, maybe.

It seems to have been on-target, though, in what I see as its theme, individualism, which drives the subplot with the nurse and the stranger.

Nurse Fay Apple advocates for her patients, who the townspeople derisively refer to as “Cookies.” She wants them treated with dignity and respect. Her entree to that is to have them go down to the stone and drink the miracle water, along with everyone else. The mayor and her hangers-on don’t want that to happen because, they think, the Cookies won't get any benefit, thereby exposing the ruse. This escalates to Fay eventually wanting the Cookies all to be freed.

The stranger, Hapgood, comes to town and is immediately mistaken (spoiler alert) to be the expected new doctor for The Cookie Jar. He plays along, but soon enough all he cares for is Fay.

After a lot of comedy, there is a bit of heartbreak. Hapgood urges Fay to leave it all behind and run away together with him. You kind of want her to. It’s a comedy after all. But Fay is determined to seek justice for the Cookies.

After some more madness, Fay relents. She does leave it all behind. Then comes a very important piece. After Fay has made her decision, she sees the new nurse come to town to work at The Cookie Jar. This one is just as committed, maybe even moreso, maybe even a little too much, and storms off into battle, just as Fay once did.

It’s clear that the crazy townspeople are going to keep chasing each other around in circles and nothing really is going to change, except maybe the location – the rumor is there is a new miracle in the next town over.

Finally, at the very, very end, we are left with a powerful image affirming that personal transformation and personal happiness are about the best we can hope for, while the “world keep on turnin’” as Stevie Wonder says.

This message that personal transformation and happiness are what we are here for, not making a “new England,” not fomenting a “revolution” is ultimately a conservative one. This is all the more reason to wonder why Anyone Can Whistle was supposedly too much for America 1964. Maybe it was the water?

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