WHISTLE Down The Wind is not one of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s better-known musicals but it did give birth to a number one for Boyzone in August 1998 when the Irish boy band could have topped the charts with a cough.

No Matter What was the song in question, and it is hard to match the pretty, drippy hit with the musical’s version, divided between children and a town mob, out to track down a fugitive.

You may well remember the whimsical 1961 film with Hayley Mills and Alan Bates, the Keith Waterhouse and Willis Hall script and the Lancashire farm setting.

For the musical, in come Lloyd Webber and Meat Loaf’s rock opera lyricist Jim Steinman for a combination of ballads and rock numbers, challenging high notes and a children’s anthem, When Children Rule The World.

The setting has switched from Lancashire to Louisiana in the American deep south of 1959, where the values of church (Martin Parrott’s Minister, Neil Foster’s Preacher), authority (Martin Rowley’s Sheriff and John Hall’s widowed father, Boone) are faced by the new America of Elvis Presley and James Dean (not mentioned), teenage desire for freedom and change (Grace Lancaster’s Candy) and black leather (Aran McRae’s motorbike-riding Amos).

Swallow (Robyn McIntyre) is 15 and the eldest of three children – Coraleigh Hobson’s Brat and Oscar Rogers’ Poor Baby are the other two – left in the sole care of Boone after their mother died all too young. She is at that impressionable, vulnerable age, missing her mother terribly too, so when she discovers a wounded man in the family farm barn, asks him who he is, and his response – uttered in cursing pain – is “Jesus Christ”, maybe she has found the saviour to reunite her with her mother.

Fantasy clashes with reality – “The Man” is in fact a murderer on the run – and the innocence of youth clashes with the bigotry of adults, just as tradition clashes with modernity in a musical that sounds rather weightier than what unfolds.

The dialogue by co-book writers Patricia Knop and Gale Edwards with Lloyd Webber is trite and the songs are not from Lloyd Webber’s top drawer (the show never made it to Broadway), but let’s put these weaknesses to one side.

Instead, praise must go to West End musical actor Scott Garnham, on his return to home pastures, who directs his company with aplomb in tandem with assistant director Martin Lettin.

In particular, this show announces the talent of 18-year-old Robyn McIntyre, from Knaresborough, who has risen from understudy duties in Miss Saigon to become the latest addition to York Stage Musicals’ impressive list of young discoveries. She can truly act – she has the show’s best southern accent – and she has a singing voice born for musicals.

Iain Harvey, last seen as Cosmo Brown in Singin’ In The Rain and more often associated with lighter, humorous parts, graduates impressively to serious lead status; Hall and Rowley lend welcome senior experience; McRae and Lancaster are as eye-catching as ever; and Hobson and Rogers handle the spotlight well.

Robert Readman’s barn set is set off by excellent lighting and music director Michael Thompson guides his band through myriad styles with customary élan.

Whistle Down The Wind may be a far from great musical, but Garnham’s cast makes it a good show, one that will improve even more as the week progresses.

 

Whistle Down The Wind, York Stage Musicals, until Friday. Box office: 01904 623568 or online at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk