New look at a rare ‘Whistle’

“Anyone Can Whistle” lasted only nine performances on Broadway in 1964. But the Stephen Sondheim-Arthur Laurents musical is about to be reborn -- in Los Angeles.

A West Coast Ensemble production in February will mark the first time that an authorized revision of the show will receive a full production.

One of the most famous of short-lived musicals, the original production generated a cast album and a title song that became a cabaret standard.

The quirks of Laurents’ satirical book are usually cited as the reason the show isn’t produced more often. The story traces the efforts of the corrupt leaders of a small town to attract tourists with a fake “miracle,” and the reactions of the local mental patients and their nurse. The last professional production in Los Angeles was in 1986 at Dupree Studio Theatre.

After Michael Michetti received the assignment to direct West Coast Ensemble’s revival, “I immersed myself in the script,” he said, looking for ways to clarify and strengthen the narrative. He sent the results to Laurents and Sondheim, and received their permission to proceed. Laurents even sent back some revisions that will be incorporated in Michetti’s version.

Michetti reduced the original’s three acts to two, cut about 10% of the dialogue and reordered some of the musical numbers so that the famous title song will now end the first act. His primary goal was to emphasize the character of the nurse. In the original, he said, “the protagonist and the primary plot points rarely intersect.”

“It focused the piece more,” Laurents agreed, speaking from New York. In fact, the L.A. rewrite will be performed next year in London, he said. Laurents once prepared his own trimmed version for a concert reading.

Laurents said he won’t see the production in L.A., which he regards as a company town for the movie industry, “not my favorite city.”