Sondheim's "Anyone Can Whistle" at Carnegie Hall—Ted Sperling Interview

MasterVoices presents Anyone Can Whistle

Book by Arthur Laurents

Music and Lyrics by Stephen Sondheim

Conducted and Directed by Ted Sperling

Thursday, March 10, 2022

Carnegie Hall, 7th Avenue and 57th Street

mastervoices.org

Ted Sperling and Vanessa Williams rehearsing Anyone Can Whistle (photo: Carrington Spires)

MasterVoices announced its concert performance of the musical Anyone Can Whistle long before its composer-lyricist, the legendary Stephen Sondheim, died in November. The show is one of the few outright Sondheim flops, lasting only a dozen or so performances on Broadway in 1964 despite stars Angela Lansbury and Lee Remick. It’s been revived infrequently, most recently in New York by Encores in 2010 with Donna Murphy, Sutton Foster and Raúl Esparza—which was quite the cast.

So it’s no surprise that the Carnegie Hall performance is equally starry, with several Broadway veterans taking the lead roles: Vanessa Williams—who has appeared on Broadway in Kiss of the Spider Woman and Sondheim’s Into the Woods—and other big musical names like Santino Fontana, Elizabeth Stanley, Joanna Gleason, Douglas Sills and Eddie Cooper.

Conducting and directing Anyone Can Whistle is Ted Sperling, MasterVoices’ artistic director, who is also a Sondheim veteran going back decades. Sperling took time out from his busy rehearsal schedule for the cast to master the challenging Sondheim score to discuss Anyone Can Whistle, Vanessa Williams and Stephen Sondheim’s legacy.

Vanessa Williams and dancers in rehearsal (photo: Jason Brouillard)

Kevin Filipski: You announced Anyone Can Whistle long before Stephen Sondheim died in November. How do you decide which shows MasterVoices will present and perform?

Ted Sperling: Part of MasterVoices’ mission is to rediscover shows that don’t get seen or heard often in New York. Before this, we did (Kurt Weill’s) Lady in the Dark and (George and Ira Gershwin’s) Let ‘Em Eat Cake, two shows you never get to see. And in Anyone Can Whistle, there’s also a substantial contribution from the chorus. I try to schedule pieces that have a story that’s particularly relevant—and this is a show that literally divides its characters into two groups and is very clearly about political corruption, greed and concentrating wealth among a select group of people. Also, this show was written in a period of great upheaval and turmoil (the early 1960s), amid a national conversation about conformity and the upheaval of norms. And I think we’re definitely at a similar inflection point now. The culture wars are still raging and being politicized.

Vanessa Williams in Kiss of the Spider Woman on Broadway, 1994

KF: Vanessa Williams plays the lead role, the corrupt politician Cora Hoover Hooper. She has done so much in the entertainment world over the past three decades, from singing number-one pop hits to starring in television sitcoms to singing and dancing in many roles on and off-Broadway, including several Sondheim shows. What are her special qualities as an artist?

TS: She has a lot of natural warmth, which helps make Cora a well-rounded character just by her natural essence—we were discussing yesterday at rehearsal what a complicated person the lead in Anyone Can Whistle is, but she can handle all that. She’s a wonderful singer and can sing over an enormous range. This score has its jazzy and classical elements as well, and she can handle those easily. I’ve worked on a couple of memorable projects with her in the past. I did Kiss of the Spider Woman (her first Broadway show, in 1994) with her: I was the conductor at the time and, since she was replacing Chita Rivera, we had to make adjustments, and it was fun to explore those with her. Then we did Show Boat with the New York Philharmonic several years later, and she was wonderful in that too. 

Donna Murphy in Anyone Can Whistle at Encores, 2010

KF: What do you consider Stephen Sondheim’s legacy?

TS: I would say specifically that he had a big influence on my life. My first professional production was playing in (the original production of) Sunday in the Park with George, and that was due to his involvement. I was involved in many of his productions over the years, including his last show, Road Show, which was called Wise Guys originally when I was involved. We all admire him for pushing the art form forward, for always doing something different. He never repeated himself: every score is different. He tackled various subjects, he was always trying to stretch and see what’s possible in a musical. He wrote so well for his characters, they were such complex characters. There are endless amounts to discover in his shows.