Webber's Whistle Closes at Aldwych, 6 Jan

Whistle Down The Wind, Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical currently playing at the Aldwych Theatre, has posted closing notices for the new year. The show opened on 1 July 1998, following previews from 22 June, and had been booking to April 2001. It will now close on 6 January 2001 after a two-and-a-half year run.

The musical, with a score by Lloyd Webber and lyrics by Jim Steinman, is based on the novel by Mary Hayley Bell and the classic 1961 film, which starred Hayley Mills and Alan Bates, was produced by Richard Attenborough and was directed by Bryan Forbes. For the stage show, the original story, which was set in rural England, was relocated to 1950s Louisiana in the American Deep South.

The story revolves around three farm children who discover a man hiding in a barn and believe that he is Jesus. It currently stars Laura-Michelle Kelly as the teenaged Swallow and Jerome Pradon is The Man who bewitches her. The cast also features two teams of ten children, aged between nine and fourteen, who alternate performances.

The production is directed by Gale Edwards, who previously worked with Lloyd Webber on Aspects of Love and the revival of Jesus Christ Superstar. Choreography is by Anthony Van Laast, who worked on Lloyd Webber's Song and Dance and the revival of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat at the London Palladium.

It is rumoured that the Royal Shakespeare Company's production of The Secret Garden - also based on a classic novel, by Frances Hodgson Burnett - will replace Whistle Down The Wind at the Aldwych Theatre after it finishes its run in Stratford. The RSC musical, directed by Adrian Noble and designed by Anthony Ward, is scheduled to play at Stratford's Royal Shakespeare Theatre from November until the end of January 2001.

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