Mary Hayley Bell’s book of Whistle Down the Wind, set in Lancashire, is transported to rural Louisiana in the musical adaptation by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Jim Steinman, now revived at the Watermill.

Teenager Swallow is grieving for her dead mother and when an escaped convict appears at her home she things he’s the reincarnation of Jesus, with the power to bring back her mother. Swallow’s younger siblings Brat and Poor Baby team up with their friends to protect The Man from the townsfolk.

The Lloyd Webber music has a good selection of songs which, unlike many modern musicals, have catchy and memorable tunes, enhanced by Jim Steinman’s punchy lyrics. What makes this musical something special is the combination of skilful actor-musicians, stunning choreography and lighting and the excellent cast of children, singing and acting their socks off. Choreography on the Watermill’s tiny stage can be a problem, but director and choreographer Tom Jackson Greaves has cracked it.

As Swallow, Lydia White gave a thoughtful and sympathetic performance, constantly thinking about her Mother (Stephanie Elstob), who danced around with her, never speaking but giving emotional support. Robert Tripolino as The Man was powerful and charismatic with a strong singing voice. As the children’s father Boone, Lloyd Gorman was stern but kind.

Life was never going to be easy for Amos (Lewis Cornay), white, and Candy (Chrissie Bhima), black, in 1959 Louisiana and they planned to move out. Amos was tempted by Swallow, singing A Kiss is a Terrible Thing to Waste, giving Bhima the chance to show off some powerful singing and dancing.

The first act has a great ensemble finale with No Matter What, probably the best-known song, which was a platinum single hit in 1998.

Three groups of six children are used in the production and have a significant part to play in the action. On press night, all were impressive and deserve a mention: Isabelle Carrol as Brat, Huey Lockwood as Poor Baby, Mieke Brown as Elizabeth, Hugh Parker-Farrell as Winston, Imogen Jermey as Ramona and Katie McGall (lovely singing) as Louise.

Lighting Designer Andrew Exeter enhanced the production’s manic pace with multiple light changes, taking advantage of slits in Simon Kenny’s set to give eerie shafts of light.

Having seen the very English film with Hayley Mills many years ago, I wasn’t sure what to expect from this production, but I was quickly won over by a show with so much to enjoy.

PAUL SHAVE

Fine singing, but this Jesus Christ is no superstar

It’s easy to forget that for every Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat and Evita that Andrew Lloyd Webber has churned out, there has been a By Jeeves and Stephen Ward. Revived in the UK for the first time in more than a decade at the idyllic Watermill Theatre in Berkshire, Whistle Down the Wind certainly falls into this latter category of minor Lloyd Webber. A few catchy songs like No Matter What and Whistle Down the Wind keep proceedings buoyant, but are not enough to offset an uneven storyline.

It tells the story of Swallow (Lydia White) and her siblings Baby (Huey Lockwood) and Brat (Isabelle Carroll), three children on an impoverished Louisiana farm in 1959, struggling to come to terms with the death of their mother. They discover a escaped murderer (Robert Tripolino) living in their barn, who they believe to be Jesus Christ returned.

The production is well-cast, with strong Louisiana accents abound, and an array of bright-eyed children injecting a sparky energy. The strongest performers are the two leads: Tripolino has a brooding intensity, while White’s expression is an intoxicating blend of yearning and fear.

What lets proceedings down somewhat is the source material. Much of the first part of the play feels tonally simplistic: everything is either happy and clappy or sad and mournful, with a lot of ballad-style pieces and less of the musical experimentation that can be found in Lloyd Webber at his best.

The discovery and naming of the convict as Jesus Christ - an event that takes a big stretch of the imagination to actually believe could take place – feels a little unbelievable, happening just a few moments after we are first introduced to the family, at a time when they still don’t feel fully fleshed out.

The Watermill Theatre holds a small stage that must be used with some restraint – but unfortunately some of the direction from Tom Jackson Greaves feels a little cluttered. There are so many actors crossing in front of each other, and so many instrumentalists lingering in the wings, that it can be hard to know who to focus on.

The second half is a big improvement. As the plot reaches its climax, the cluttered stage adds a slightly deranged energy to proceedings, which feel appropriate as the convict labours to try and maintain his assumed identity, and everything begins to come to a head. For much of the play, the choreography (also Greaves) feels a little melodramatic – think Kevin Bacon in Footloose – but by the end there are some stunning visual pieces of adults and children intricately dancing around each other.

Like much of Lloyd Webber’s repertoire, it is a show inspired by Christian source material to tell a deeply humanist story. It is an enjoyable revival of a semi-forgotten show, even if it does not quite set the heart alight.

NICK FERRIS

Outstanding production of the Lloyd Webber musical

Tom Jackson Greaves thrillingly fuses movement with music in his revival of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Louisiana-set take on the classic 60s film

Many will remember Whistle Down the Wind from the 1961 film starring Hayley Mills as the young girl who mistakes Alan Bates’s injured criminal on the run for Jesus Christ. She hides him in the family barn, where she and her siblings and other children bring him gifts and ask him for Bible-style stories. Andrew Lloyd Webber’s 1996 musical relocates the action from rural Lancashire to steamy, late-50s Louisiana (the musical palette smudges bluegrass, rock, ballads, gospel; Stuart Morley’s arrangements). With lyrics from Jim Steinman, whose writing credits include Meat Loaf’s Bat Out of Hell, the feel is less Sunday school, more gothic noir.

In Tom Jackson Greaves’s tightly honed production, the tonal contrasts are most stark (and moving) in the pre-interval crescendo scene: children gather in the barn around The Man (whom they believe is Jesus), singing a gentle, chiming lyric, “The demons are gone, The young are strong”. Meanwhile, circling adults in the world beyond menacingly pound a heavy-on-the-bass, revivalist number, “You’ve got to wrestle with the devil”. Elsewhere, though, the book (by Lloyd Webber with Patricia Knop and Gale Edwards) does not present oppositions so simplistically.

The 12-strong company of actor-musicians, along with six younger cast members, delivers strong characterisations of people struggling with hard choices in a gumbo world of racial tensions, religious revivalism, small-town vindictiveness and teen rebellion. All the performers are outstanding, but special mention to Robert Tripolino as The Man, Manichaean angel/devil, and to Lydia White’s girl (older than Mills’s film character), moving through childish innocence to burgeoning adolescence.

Jackson Greaves, as director and choreographer, thrillingly fuses movement with music, turning his actor-musicians into a chorus (almost in the style of Greek tragedy), expanding the world of the action, amplifying the characters’ emotions and pulling together extremes of every day and supernatural. What seems incredible becomes affectingly believable.

CLARE BRENNAN

Fiery revival of Lloyd Webber’s unloved show

New production reshapes the 1996 original set in rural Louisiana as a taut fable of faith and fear

Andrew Lloyd Webber’s most recent musical, Cinderella, morphed into a cautionary tale of self-sabotaging PR as the peevish peer publicly berated his first cast and then effectively sacked their successors via social media. It’s a relief to sneak into his back catalogue with this relatively unloved 1996 show, reshaped by the Watermill as a taut fable of faith and fear.

Lloyd Webber, lyricist Jim Steinman and their collaborators shift Mary Hayley Bell’s source novel from rural England to smalltown Louisiana in 1959, heaped with gingham, graft and terror of the hereafter. Simon Kenny’s planked walls extend from the snug wooden auditorium, making the whole building into the hellfire chapel where the townsfolk gather for a weekly scolding, or the barn where an escaped prisoner hides out.

The barn belongs to a family reeling from a mother’s death. Grief fills their lives, until teenage Swallow (sweet-voiced Lydia White) discovers the fugitive (inked and grimy Robert Tripolino). He’s a murderer dodging a manhunt, but she and the local children take him for Jesus. This isn’t wholly plausible – they see his injuries as stigmata – but their secret gives the kids a jolt of agency. The man plays on Swallow’s naive desire for transformation: “You can help me with the second coming.”

Even these tense conversations aren’t private in Tom Jackson Greaves’ busy, physically fluid production. The cast double as musicians, making for a crowded stage. They press in on intimate scenes – strings and woodwind keeping up a prying tremolo – and circle round the fugitive. The songs include No Matter What, later a hit for Boyzone, and the standout in a strong ensemble is recent graduate Chrissie Bhima, belting and limber in cat-eye glasses, as a woman yearning to break free.

Apocalyptic language runs through the hardscrabble community’s veins: faith liberates and hobbles them in equal measure. They endure difficulty (one unconsoling number is called It Just Doesn’t Get Any Better Than This) while they wait on revelations. A hectic revivalist meeting promises snake-handling, but it’s a serpentine Tripolino who personifies the coils of sin as the production closes in on its fiery end.

DAVID JAYS

The Watermill's wind of change

The Watermill’s fresh vibrant production of Andrew Lloyd Webber and Jim Steinman’s 1996 rock musical Whistle Down the Wind is filled with energy and imaginative staging by director and choreographer Tom Jackson Greaves.

Set in Louisiana’s ‘Bible Belt’, religious fervour plays a strong part in the daily lives of the folk in this small community.

Simon Kenny’s impressive set with large wooden planks creates the church and doubles as the family’s barn. It is hauntingly lit by Andrew Exeter.

Lydia White sensitively plays the young teenager Swallow with a naïve innocence and strong Christian belief, mourning the loss of her mother. Her father Boone (Lloyd Gorman) is also trying to cope with his wife’s death.

In an inspired directorial decision, the mother (Stephanie Elstob) is the ever present ‘spirit’ on stage, guiding and controlling Swallow with some beautiful dance movements

Her two siblings Brat and Poor Baby, played on the press night by Isabelle Carroll and Huey Lockwood, are also grieving. All the children give a rousing performance of the anthem When Children Rule the World.

Elliot Mackenzie is the powerful preacher, as well as the musical director, and the actor/musicians (Charlotte Grayson, Jerome Lincoln and Alfie Richards) perform the evocative rock musical score by Stuart Morley with gusto.

Emma Jane Morton provides a whole woodwind section, including a soulful saxophone number.

The Sheriff (Toby Webster) brings urgent news of an escaped murderer on the loose who takes refuge in the family’s barn.

When the children find him sleeping there, he wakes exclaiming “Jesus Christ” and the children believe that he is indeed Jesus and hope that he can bring their mother back to life.

Robert Tripolino gives an outstanding performance as the ‘Man’, manipulative, scheming and determined to continue the fantasy in order to survive.

Racism is always in the background and Candy (Chrissie Bhima) wants to escape town with her boyfriend Amos (Lewis Cornay).

The spectacular ending is filled with drama and with songs such as No Matter What, Nature of the Beast and Whistle Down the Wind, this is a production not to be missed.

ROBIN STRAPP