Whistle Down The Wind?? — Page 4

"Or a good production concept, and the right market."

I really thought that in 2001 after 9/11 that would've been a good time to bring Whistle to NY - the themes of redemptive faith after loss in a very unique/clever story. Seemed more logical to me than By Jeeves coming (which was thought to be a diversion for people - and which I enjoyed... but flopped big time)

(Don Black wrote the new lyrics--do we know if it's because Steinman refused? Or just couldn't be bothered?)

That's never been entirely clear. It was funny watching him briefly get interviewed about the show while it was on tour in the States, because, to hear Jim talk about it, he seemed almost unaware any changes, major or minor, had been made. When asked what he thought of the new version, he said he found it "[d]isorienting. So much of the script has changed. And they have taken out many of the great effects." I can't imagine Jim wanting to lose the number that was replaced with Don Black's lyrical exercise, but he sounds so unaware of what Kenwright's production was like that I almost wonder if they even bothered to ask him.

I really thought that in 2001 after 9/11 that would've been a good time to bring Whistle to NY - the themes of redemptive faith after loss in a very unique/clever story.

Never thought of it like that, but that's a good fit. My idea is to confront, with casting, the one issue in the Gale Edwards production that the Hal Prince version never dealt with. To quote Foster Hirsch in Harold Prince and the American Musical Theatre:

"In the baking Bible Belt setting, sex was more tangibly present than the film's gray, forlorn Lancashire. Two characters not in the film, Amos and Candy, boosted the show's erotic quotient. Feeling trapped by church and farm and contemplating the dead-end lives stretching up ahead, they yearned to break away. For these young rebels Lloyd Webber wrote 'Tire Tracks and Broken Hearts,' driving Dixieland jazz as interpreted by a savvy outsider. In Washington, appropriately, a slinky bleached blonde played Candy. In casting a black actress for the role in London, Lloyd Webber and his British collaborators revealed an essential misunderstanding of their American setting: in the pre-Civil Rights-era Bible Belt, a black girl would not have intermingled with whites in the casual way the show presented."

ALW had this hopelessly naive-sounding way of hand-waving the whole thing by saying that "The children would get on, black and white, but at a certain age the cut-off happened and they were segregated." While this is possibly true, it needlessly pins the race issue on the show, presumably in an attempt to comment on everything going on in Louisiana circa 1959. It seems such a shame that race is such an important issue in such a negative way, but it has to be confronted given the time and location the authors chose for the show.

As anyone who's heard me talk about the urban production of Godspell my company produced in Harlem in the mid-Nineties will tell you, I've often said that during production my team discovered a genuine spark and sentiment in the black Christian community that one doesn't easily find elsewhere. In Harlem, Jesus is real.

So... I would strip out the the racial prejudice angle that didn't do the London production (or any subsequent production) of Whistle any favors by exploring the possibility of an all-black company. In parts of Louisiana circa 1959, this ethnic makeup was not impossible. I think it gives the show extra impact. What if black kids raised in the church, "washed in the blood," who've witnessed speaking in tongues and dancing with snakes and heard that Jesus lives and will send them to Hell if they don't believe in him their whole lives, discovered this guy in their barn?

It takes only minor emendation of the script at best to keep the bulk of the show while jettisoning the unwelcome moments (rather than race issues, it's puritanical views that keep Candy from flirting with Amos in the bright light of day; the sheriff comes down on people in the bar after "Cold" by urging them to get to their homes because when the state police come in, they won't be sympathetic to "people like us" hootin' and hollerin', even if there's not an escaped prisoner on the loose). Plus, just imagine the vocal power you gain for the hymn ("Vaults of Heaven") and the revivalist number ("Wrestle...").

This would be such an easy sell on what is now the Tyler Perry circuit (give it the right casting and direction, and it's the type of "prayer warrior" piece that could run for years) that the returns on a modest production would make one's head spin.

(Alright, the die is cast. Let's see if the troll comes out to comment on it. I am by no means implying this method of casting and production would help every show, regardless of its content. This is just one of those shows that lends itself really well to such treatment.)

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Updated On: 2/25/15 at 04:38 AM

"The Man's" guilt was more ambiguous (the bartender says the escaped convict swears he didn't commit those crimes, a lyric in "Safe Haven" is adjusted to state that "he was just a young man, condemned, with no chance to explain"), and some lines of dialogue that were cut after D.C. and London previews returned as well. There were also some throwbacks to the 1961 film, especially the added last lines of the show. Lots of score cuts and shuffling of sung material as well.

Considering the last time Steinman touched the show directly was in the Nineties, if he wasn't kept informed of what was changed, then I'd say he'd be pretty flummoxed by the new stuff.

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Updated On: 2/26/15 at 10:57 PM

I toyed with keeping the Sheriff white in this concept, and it could work -- the powers that be at the time probably would appoint a white Sheriff to keep "them" in line. And while my Google skills aren't the best, the closest thing I'm turning up to a black Sheriff is two of the first black deputies appointed to a local Louisiana parish in 1964. So that's probably a safe bet, casting-wise, if a little "on-the-nose."

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Updated On: 2/26/15 at 10:17 AM