Anyone Can Whistle: A Musical Fable.

LAURENTS, Arthur & Stephen Sondheim.

$3,000.00

Item Number: 762

New York: Random House, 1965.

First edition of this classic work. Octavo, original cloth. Warmly Inscribed by both Arthur Laurents and Stephen Sondheim on the half-title page. Fine in a near fine bright jacket without the fading usually encountered with the spine.

Anyone can whistle is a play written by the same author of the West Side Story, and it was performed on Broadway in 1964, Carnegie Hall concert in 1995, and the New York City Center Encores in 2010. The New York Times wrote that Laurents' "book lacks the fantasy that would make the idea work, and his staging has not improved matters. Mr. Sondheim has written several pleasing songs but not enough of them to give the musical wings. The performers yell rather than talk and run rather than walk. The dancing is the cream." And Steven Suskin wrote, the "fascinating extended musical scenes, with extended choral work, ... immediately marked Sondheim as the most distinctive theatre composer of his time. The first act sanity sequence ... and the third act chase ... are unlike anything that came before."