Anyone Can Whistle If You Let It

Anyone Can Whistle - ufaFabrik, Berlin, 10th February 2012

I hadn't thought I'd ever see the day that that Stephen Sondheim musical would be performed in Germany but wonders it did happen even if meant I had to go to Berlin to see it. Well, of course I didn't have to but wanting to see it I just did. ;-)

So on a cold February evening in my ugly capital city (not a Berlin fan at all) I was off to the ufaFabrik. It was actually advertised as "unique mix between a live audio play and a musical reading" and not a full stage version but that did not harm. It was actually exactly that delivered. What an experience.

Fay Apple - Frederike Haas
Cora Hoover Hooper - Katja Brauneis
Hapgood - Gerald Michel
Comptroller Schub - Oliver Andre Timpe
Treasurer Cooley / Dr.Detmold - Tino Kießling
Chief of Police - Martin G. Berger
Narrator - Roman Rehor

Ensemble - Sahand Aghdasi, Sandra Becher, Ben Fink, Sandra Mennecke, Sarah Renner, Dennis Weißert

Director - Martin G. Berger
Musical Director - Bijan Azadian
Visuals - Klaudia Kapelmann
Dramaturgy - Ben Fink
Sound Design - Michael Viol
Foley Artists - Andreas Hegewald, Isabel Zobel
“Ambience“ - Wolf Nils Bartels

Band
Drums - Jörg Trinks
Bass - Max Nauta
Second Keyboard & Mallets - Dominik Walenciak

Stage setting prior show

The piece is often described “as an experimental satirical musical” targeting “everything on the American cultural scene” of the 60s – “(non)conformity, psychology, race relations, greed, religion, politics”… - and is based in an unnamed destitute American town in (apparently) the 30s (! But it is obvious that things have not changed for the last decades as the issues are still these days very much the same and some have actually gone further IMHO) which is faced with bankruptcy.

Cora Hoover Hooper, the town's mayoress, and her faithful henchmen concoct a fake "miracle" to bring in tourism. Unfortunately, during the tourist rush, when Fay Apple, a young nurse at the local asylum, Dr Detmold’s ‘Cookie Jar for the Socially Pressured’ brings all the inmates (aka the “cookies”) to the miracle, the cookies escape and mix among the tourists and the townspeople.

A stranger then appears in the town who turns out to be doctor Hapgood (and everyone thinks he is Dr Detmold’s new assistant) says he can identify the insane from the sane people as nurse Fay Apple refuses to identify her charges. Later she starts to fall in love with Hapgood and the line between sanity and insanity begin to blur entirely. The story takes some twists and ends IMO rather optimistically.

I will not go into further details of the actual show, why it works or not which seems to be the common opinion, too many articles have been written for the last nearly 50 years about it.

I was just pleased to see it at last to hear Sondheim's most remarkable early score that is full of different flavours, so varied, innovative, sophisticated, extremely witty being a ride of jazz-y, show biz razzle dazzle, gospel, golden age broadway etc. numbers performed so well under Bijan Azadian‘s slick and thriving musical direction.

Most outstanding is the excellent translation by Martin G. Berger which does stick very closely to the original but still matches the music perfectly without coming up with bad rhyming (unlike the show I saw the day after) and some ridiculous word creations as sometimes (or often in case of some translators) in some other shows.

Kai Wulfes of musicalzentrale.de criticised that you could not hear it well though often which I cannot say. I understood everything that was said from where I sat (fourth row in the middle) very well. There was the odd spluttering but that did not bother at all. It actually added humanity to the production for me with the characters being elaborated well by the director Berger.

He also said that this production does not have any kind of staging etc. which is just not true; it is just not as obvious (and interesting that a criticising comment to that review was deleted a few hours after being posted!).

As a concert production and with the focus on the audio play part, when you actually closed your eyes it came a lot more alive and how the different pieces matched together perfectly especially with the (in a corner on the stage rather hidden) foley artists’ impressive work of the various noises etc creating the sound component plus the narrator, just as in an audio play, helped just with the right amount of descriptions and storytelling to follow the story. Yes, there were no real costumes but the odd accessories as a scarf to highlight when Fay was pretending to be French and the choreo element was rather limited (funny idea with filming and putting it on the screen behind the cast though for a little tap dance number due to the limited space onstage!) but I had not expected it anyway and it suited all very well. Yes, the leads “just” stood next to each other and usually read the script and did not interact obviously physically but with their voices mainly but again that’s what I had expected.

Casting-wise the two leading ladies clearly steal the show.

Frederike Haas who while sitting between the others seemed rather plain turned out to be an absolute stunner as the adorable cute Fay Apple. Blessed with a most beautiful, clear voice she easily handled the role vocally and the wit and humour of 'Come Play Wiz me' as the vulnerability of the title song, and the passion of 'There Won't be Trumpets' being an actress who has it all while Katja Brauneis as Cora Hoover Hooper was one monumental musical comedy monster-ess right out of a satiric cartoon movie being so snarky and eccentric.

Oliver Andre Timpe as the nasty Comptroller Schub was a bit too harmless and nice for me sometimes and could be a lot more slippery and actually nastier with his voice being also a bit too clear and young for me though his singing was faultless and the rest of the audience appreciated his performance during curtain call.

The charm of leading man Gerald Michel as Hapgood was obvious delivering a solid performance with a beautifully clear, direct singing style. Again though, the performance was too nice and not manic enough, while having charm, for me and lacked some charisma for me. “Just” the love, the passion for life and love came across well for me.

Tino Kießling as the Treasurer and Detmold gave a quirky hilarious performance that had me in stitches, wonderful to watch and especially listen to. The rest of the ensemble, most notably Ben Fink, equipped with a voice to die for, for me, was also a bright delight and worked well with the leads.

A wonderful vibrant evening overall of an "insane", but enormously appealing piece of art that deserves a fully staged production now.