One result of trying to recover from my recent trip to France and England is that I am waking up ridiculously early and wanting to fall asleep at 8:00 PM. While I’d love to be sleeping right now, I think the next best option would be to tell about the West End play my group saw while we were in London. It was called Whistle Down the Wind.
On first glance at the advertisement you’ll notice that Andrew Lloyd Webber did the music- so it must be quality, right? I’ll touch on that later. And you also see that right after the title of the musical, they’ve added “the hit musical”. Um, not so much. I’m also very amused by whomever made the comment at the top of the poster…. “don’t miss this musical triumph”. Were they taking drugs when they saw it?
Let me just start out by saying that I’ve been to my share of weird/crazy churches in my life. I’ve also attended a lot of genuine, warm, non-showy churches, but the memory of those bad ones will always stick. This musical made me feel like I was in a dysfunctional church again, like I couldn’t leave before the final alter call. The opening number was a virtual sermon about hellfire and damnation and that’s where my squirming began.
The basic plot that follows is this: Three children are in rural America in the 50’s, trying to cope with their mother’s recent death and their family’s lack of money for a proper Christmas. Did I say America? Yes, the London actors and actresses did their best to imitate an American accent; however, it just ended up sounding like they were talking with rocks stuffed in their mouths. The family is a devout bunch of Christians; the type that bring Jesus into almost any conversation, nauseatingly so, such as, “If you prayed to Jesus then maybe he will give you ______________” (fill in the blank). I guess as a Christian, I felt that these ones were portrayed as hopelessly moronic. Maybe it was poor acting- or perhaps it was other things.
What follows the awkward opening number is a number of stiff songs with hardly any choreography in which the characters, with arms stiff at their sides, lift their heads dramatically and open their mouths with passionate song to the audience. It doesn’t work. I felt nothing. They didn’t give me any basis from which to like them or feel their story, so when they got emotional in the first 10 minutes I tuned out. Okay, I may have started giggling. Next, the righteous townfolk (everyone is stereotyped in this musical) are spreading the alert that a murderer has escaped from the local jail. The oldest girl, who is 15, discovers a strange man sleeping in her family’s barn, whom she startles when she asks who he is. “Jesus Christ!” escapes his lips when he sees her, and from that moment on the play does a nosedive. The children are all called in the barn because they are convinced this is the Savior’s return and so they sit at the murderer’s feet. They notice that his hands are bloodied… and so are his feet. DEFINITELY Jesus. “Don’t you remember, they tell us every Sunday that one day he will return and those that fail to recognize him will burn in a fiery hell.” The children devote themselves to the confused murderer, saying they will do anything he wants them to.
The play doesn’t get much better from here. “Jesus” sings with noticable problems staying on pitch, and the other problems which are presented (racial strife, coming-of-age issues) don’t seem quite real. The lack of choreography really stood out at me as well. While I think that the director probably wanted something stark and simplistic, the end effect was fluff and overemotionalism. The songs were equally ineffective as they used almost every cliche in the book in the most insipid plot known to man. Here’s one example:
No matter what they tell us, no matter what they do
No matter what they teach us, what we believe is true
(Hmmm, this seems to be the theme of Whistle Down the Wind- blind faith in anything. Lovely.) Another gem:
The devil doesn’t rest
So wrestle with the devil till you take him, until he’s finally, cold and dead
He’s there in the reflections on the river skimming by
He’s there in the clouds as they blacken the sky
He’s there in your bedroom, He can crawl into your dreams
And the finale:
So try and stem the tide, then you’ll raise a banner
Send a flare up in the sky, try to burn a torch
And try to build a bonfire
Every signal that you send, until the very end, I’m there
So whistle down the wind, for I have always been right there
Low point in the play: when “Jesus” tries to make out with the oldest daughter. Yuck… the kids in my group couldn’t stop talking about the creepiness of that one.
I admit that hearing things like this made me giggle and shake my head in astonishment that all of the actors on stage were sincere. They truly believed in this play, with a blind “no matter what they tell us” faith. As for me- I wanted everyone in the musical to just quickly say their lines and sing their songs so we could all go home. When it finally DID end, the crowd (composed mostly of tour groups like ours… likely the reason this play is still running) erupted into scattered, confused applause as if to say, ‘I never thought this moment would come.’ I have never been so grateful to leave the theater.
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