Anyone Can Whistle: History and Key Facts

Anyone Can Whistle is a musical with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, and a book by Arthur Laurents. Described as "a satire on conformity and the insanity of the so-called sane," the show tells a story of an economically depressed town whose corrupt mayor decides to create a fake miracle in order to attract tourists. The phony miracle draws the attention of an emotionally inhibited nurse, a crowd of inmates from a local asylum, and a doctor with secrets of his own.

Following a tryout period in Philadelphia, Anyone Can Whistle opened at the Majestic Theatre on April 4, 1964, with Angela Lansbury making her stage musical debut. The show received widely varied reviews (including negative notices from the New York Times and the New York Herald Tribune), and closed after a run of twelve previews and nine performances.

While the score has become an acclaimed part of Sondheim's canon, Anyone Can Whistle has seen relatively few productions compared to other Sondheim musicals. The title song, "Everybody Says Don't", and "There Won't Be Trumpets" have been performed widely.

Source and attribution

Text excerpted from Anyone Can Whistle by Wikipedia contributors, available under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0. The extract is abridged and formatting has been adjusted; the adapted text on this page is shared under the same licence. Revision history.