"Wind" travels from U.K. to '50s Louisiana

It's taken more than a decade to get here, but "Whistle Down the Wind," the 1996 Andrew Lloyd Webber musical based on a charming 1961 Hayley Mills movie, finally arrives at the 5th Avenue Theatre this week.

"It all began for me in 1962," said Bill Kenwright, the London-based producer-director who is bringing it here. "Like every teenage boy who saw this wonderful black-and-white movie, I fell in love with Hayley Mills."

Kenwright grew up to direct Mills onstage in "Fallen Angels" and other plays — and to encourage Webber to create music to "Whistle Down the Wind" during the early stages of the show's creation. He's now credited with restructuring the book and guiding a successful British touring production.

The story of a teenage farm girl who discovers a fugitive in her family's barn, "Whistle Down the Wind" deals with the consequences when she and her sister and brother mistake the stranger for Jesus. The characters are loosely based on Mills and her siblings; their mother, Mary Hayley Bell, wrote the novella that inspired the film and the stage musical.

"I bought the novella immediately after seeing the film," said Kenwright. "The title may not mean much in America, but in England 'Whistle Down the Wind' is as well-known as 'It's a Wonderful Life.' "

Originally mounted in Washington, D.C., in late 1996, the first production of Webber's show flopped so badly that a Broadway run was canceled. In 1998, however, a reworked West End production was successful.

Seattle is the fifth stop for Ken-

wright's touring production, which began in Houston in September and will end in Los Angeles in April.

"I focused on the story, and Andrew let me do what I wanted," said Ken-

wright. "I gave it a real straight-through [narrative] line. Some musicals today get carried away with other things, but I like to be able to follow a story."

The original film was a turning point in the careers of several British filmmakers. It marked the debut of director Bryan Forbes ("The L-Shaped Room," "King Rat"), it was the second film to be produced by Richard Attenborough ("Gandhi") and the script was the work of Keith Waterhouse and Willis Hall ("Billy Liar"). The very young Alan Bates played the fugitive.

The film's composer, Malcolm Arnold, made use of some musical jokes ("We Three Kings" turned up as a march on the soundtrack), but his very British score was nothing like the mixture of blues, gospel, rock, country and Broadway that Webber created with his lyricist, Jim Steinman.

Webber's musical moves the action from England to Louisiana, where 15-year-old Swallow (Andrea Ross) discovers the mistaken-for-Jesus character, identified only as The Man (Eric Kunze).

The songs include "Tire Tracks and Broken Hearts" and "The Vaults of Heaven." One of them, "No Matter What," was a chart-topper in Europe in the late 1990s.

"At first I told Andrew, 'You've gone mad — putting this quintessentially English story in the middle of the Bible Belt,' " said Kenwright. "But if you set it in the mid-to-late 1950s, with the doctrine of Jesus' return being pumped into these kids, who don't have exposure to dozens of television channels, their innocence becomes credible.

"Then I heard the score and I thought: It fits."

John Hartl: johnhartl@yahoo.com