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The Arts Intel Report

Whistle Down the Wind

July 22 – Sept 10, 2022
Newbury RG20 8AE, United Kingdom

In 1996, Andrew Lloyd Webber co-wrote and composed the musical Whistle Down The Wind, based on a 1959 novella by the English actress and writer Mary Hayley Bell (wife of the actor Sir John Mills). Lloyd Webber and co-writers Patricia Knop and Gale Edwards made a few tweaks, setting the story of Swallow, a 1950s teen girl who thinks a fugitive on the run is Jesus, in Louisiana instead of England. Unfortunately, the show’s 1996 debut at the National Theater received such negative reviews that its Broadway run was canceled. The director and choreographer Tom Jackson Greaves, however, has brought a twist to the adaptation and the show is now earning raves. The character of Swallow is a bit older, but she’s still looking for God wherever she can find him. —Jensen Davis