Few can forget the impact Whistle Down the Wind made when the film was released in the 60s.

Written by Mary Haley Bell, the mother of the film’s child star Hayley Mills and giving Alan Bates the opportunity to provide a tour de force performance, this touching fable was a triumph.

Fast forward three decades and Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical take on this cinematographic classic but hits the stage with a dull thud rather than the light hand the original had demonstrated.

Too often clunky, syrupy-sentimental and anachronistic, it marries the unbelievable other-worldliness of 15-year-old Swallow, who believes she’s found Jesus in her father’s barn, to the grinding, anthemic rock music of Lloyd-Webber’s collaborator Jim Steinman, best known for his work with Meatloaf.

There seems to be no good reason to transcribe the film’s action from the Lancastrian Pennines to 1950s' bible-belt Louisiana, but one suspects that someone had been reading To Kill a Mockingbird at some point during its conception.

But despite its deficiencies the current production, playing at Malvern Theatre, was enthusiastically received by audiences, who gave it a deserved standing ovation because of the quality of the performers.

Swallow – Carly Bawden – has no concept of life outside her poor farm existence and her incredible naivety is beautifully realised by this pure-voiced performer. That she so readily accepts the escaped prisoner is Jesus Christ sits incredulously with modern-day audiences, but suspend belief and this is a story of genuine, if somewhat sentimental, charm.

Jonathan Ansell, best known from X-Factor’s G4 provided a suitably menacing lead, although his bid to make his singing voice match his macho character grated on the ear occasionally, and his character’s struggle with his feelings about the child-like Swallow could have had unfortunate Lolita overtones.

The child actors were terrific, in roles alternating between Toby Smith and Josh Simpson as Poor Baby and Alicia Kemp and Charlotte Oldroyd as Brat, they were instantly believable and loveable – no mean feat in an arena where children are generally precocious and unbearable.

Carl Stallwood did a fine job with the complex character of Bad-boy Amos, while Lincoln Stone as the tortured Boom and Scarlette Douglas as Candy were both underused in their excellent characterisation.

The set – using a versatile gallery arrangement - works beautifully, but it is a difficult production to peg – a sweet fable; rock opera or damning indictment of prejudice, Whistle Down the Wind is all and none of these things, a strange mix that somehow works, although you’re sure it shouldn’t.