Stephen Sondheim

Arthur Laurents

A Musical Fable

Anyone Can Whistle

Daniel Kilby

Pee-ew. It’s hard to believe that Arthur Laurents wrote the books for both this and Gypsy. There is only one scene that doesn’t ring horribly false, the scene coming out of Everybody Says Don’t, into the second act break. 

The rest of the book swings wildly in tone, between the cartoonishly evol Cora and her cronies, and the painfully glib commentary on how “maybe crazy people are actually the sane ones, have you thought about that?” Having shared a flat with someone who had actual psychotic episodes, I can categorically state that the same ones are the ones not hallucinating conversations between (absent) me and (non-existent) police officers

Anyone Can Whistle A Musical Fable

Reviews