What is insanity? For corrupt Mayoress Cora Hoover Hooper and her cronies, it is a threat to money-making scheme for the bankrupt town. When water suddenly springs from a rock, Cora sets her sights on making money from pilgrims desperate to receive the healing waters. But when Nurse Fay Apple, the dedicated and skeptical nurse of the local insane asylum, brings her patients to the so-called miracle, Cora’s plans are threatened and she turns to psychiatrist J. Bowden Hapgood to straighten out who is mad and who is sane. But he instead declares everyone insane, and the town enjoys its madness in the face of conformity. An early musical from Stephen Sondheim’s canon, Anyone Can Whistle is a satirical and absurdist romp about falling in line vs. being whimsically free.
Anyone Can Whistle guide sections
