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Heralded to be Lloyd Webber’s
best since “Phantom of the Opera,”
“Whistle Down the Wind”
served to be more of a moralityoriented
play than anything else.
It dealt with several of the concepts
that “Phantom” did, such as
discovering who the real monsters
are in a town that is obsessed with
a manhunt.
The play opened to tell viewers
about Swallow (played by Andrea
Ross), the heroine, whose mother
died and left her and her two
young siblings alone with their father
in rural Louisiana, the representative
of the Bible belt in the
late 1950s.
Swallow eventually found an escaped,
wounded murderer in her
family’s barn, whom she believes
to be, through a humorous turn of
events, Jesus Christ.
The rest of the musical depicted
the story of a group of children
who were also convinced that the
murderer was Jesus, as well the
adults of the town who were on a
mission to find and destroy the escaped
convict.
I was generally underwhelmed
by the play as a whole. The plot
seemed forced–it was reminiscent
of both “Phantom” and “Les Misérables,”
and the clichéd “whois-
the-real-monster-here” moral
of the story was obvious from the
beginning.
The music, while impressive,
was typical Andrew Lloyd Webber
fare. Though he ventured into
gospel, blues, and even country,
anyone who is familiar with Lloyd
Webber’s work could hear the
chord progression coming.
The cast had two shining stars:
the aforementioned Ross, and Eric
Kunze, who played the would-be
Jesus, simply credited as “The
Man.” Although the 16-year-old
Ross, whom Webber recently discovered
and took under his wing,
sounded a bit like a budding Sarah
Brightman, there is no doubt that
Kunze was almost an auditory
dead-ringer for Michael Crawford,
the man who played the Phantom
in the original cast recording of
“Phantom of the Opera.”
The children in the production
were plucked from right here in the
Northwest, as the touring company
auditions local children from each
city in which they perform, and as
an ensemble, they were fairly good.
However, Swallow’s little brother,
Poor Boy, was near unintelligible.
This could be due to the fact that he
was too young to attempt a southern
accent or, perhaps, because he
was a poor casting choice.
Overall, “Whistle Down the
Wind” was a fine bit of twohour
entertainment, but no Tony
Awards will be coming towards
this production’s direction.
“Whistle Down the Wind” is
playing until December 2 at the
5th Avenue Theatre.
Visit 5thavenue.org for tickets
and show times.
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