Sun. Feb. 3

What do you get when you mix the artistry of Andrew Lloyd Webber (who first came to fame with "Jesus Christ Superstar") and Jim Steinman (who first came to fame with Meat Loaf's "Bat Out of Hell")? You get "Whistle Down the Wind," a musical that borrows liberally - musically and thematically - from those two works. That means there's some bombast, some treacle, and yet some palpable uplift. The play, which closes today at the Citi Performing Arts Center's Wang Theatre, even stars Eric Kunze (in photo), an angelic looking fellow you might have seen play Jesus in the touring production of "Jesus Christ Superstar." Here, he plays an escaped Louisiana convict who may or may not be Jesus. (Kunze is not apparently the kind of actor who worries about typecasting.) The local children who find him in their barn think he is because when they startle him and ask who he is he proclaims, "Jesus Christ!" This is a town, you see, steeped in evangalicism. The children who find him have recently suffered the loss of their mother. The daughter, Swallow, (Whitney Bashor) wishes nothing more than her resurrection  - well, she also fancies boys - and she thinks this Jesus might just be able to bring back ma. That's not all, of course. There's the Bible-thumpers who believe "you've gotta be prepared to wrestle with the devil in a heartbeat" and the teenagers, a white guy and a black girl, who just wanna get out of this stifling small town and its mentality. We grew up in a small town in Maine. We can relate.

Backstory: The play was based on the novel by Mary Hayley Bell and 1961 movie. The musical, with book by Webber, Gale Edwards and Patricia Knop and lyrics by Steinman, first played the States in 1996. It was revived ten years later in London and it's now at the beginning of what they're calling its "first ever" US national tour. It's now set in 1959.
Warning: Cat lovers, there's a disturbing dumping-unwanted-kitties-in-a-bag-in-barrel scene - stage kitties, mind you, but still ... It's not, though, gratuitous. The salvation of one of the kitties relates to the basic reality here - every living thing eventually dies. But, if you know the work of Webber and Steinman, you know that there's life before death (maybe after, too) and that's what the characters here are trying to find. Life, not just existence. As to the Man - that's how the maybe-Jesus guy is referred to in the cast listing - he's just looking for a way out of town. When he figures out how he's perceived - that he's considered to be the embodiment of the Second Coming by the kids - he uses that to his advantage. Who wouldn't? But the muscled and gym-ripped Kunze does not play a malicious sort. It is suggested that the murder he was convicted for he might not have committed - even though he 'fesses up to doing some bad things. We don't want to reveal what becomes of him as the police close in on him in the barn. And, actually, there's some ambiguity about that anyhow. But we'll say that we found this to be an engaging workout that shuffles the light and the dark, wrestles with the struggles of youth, and delivers some damn catchy pop tunes to boot. (That's the guilty pleasure part: Steinman and Webber, for all their overblown gestures, are capable of putting together grabby tunes that have a measure of wit and heft.) What may push you toward the "Oh, why not let's take a chance on this" decision: All tickets are just $25, and if you're thinking of Super Sunday, rest assured the matinee is at 1 p.m., and the play lasts 2 hours and 20 minutes. Do the math and that means you should be home in plenty of time for the Super Bowl. .

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