Steve Pratt talks to popular touring musical star Richard Swerrun about the challenge of switching a technicolour dreamcoat for grey hair, moustache and middle-aged stubble.

IT'S a good job that the party of fans from Darlington checked to see if Richard Swerrun was appearing in the musical Whistle Down The Wind in York before booking tickets.

They might have watched the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical at the Grand Opera House without realising he was in it.

The show presents a very different Swerrun to the one who has spent three-and-a-half years playing Joseph in another Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice show, Joseph And The Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. Notching up almost 3,000 performances, he surely deserves an entry in the Guinness Book of Records.

The invitation to play the father, whose children think they've found Jesus hiding in the barn on their farm, in Whistle Down The Wind came from producer and director Bill Kenwright. "It's not the normal sort of part I play, it's different to anything I've done before," admits Swerrun. "Quite a few fans have been to the show and not recognised me until act two. I'm normally blond and hopefully youthful-looking. Now I'm 42, with grey hair, moustache and stubble. "I think Bill likes to throw things that are completely against character at me because he knows I like to play totally diverse things. I came out of the stage door the other night and there were people who've seen everything I've ever done - and they said they didn't recognise me on stage at first."

Kenwright also produced Joseph, which Swerrun played again in London's West End and on tour before joining the Whistle Down The Wind tour in March. His previous Joseph tour was supposed to be his last. "But then the telephone rings and on go the gold trousers and loincloth, and you do it again," he says.

The role in Whistle Down The Wind isn't that big but he sing the title song. "It's great for me because everything has to change - normally, I'm a very high tenor but I have to be baritone and look very different," he says.

"I love touring, visiting different theatres and towns and audiences. For me, it helps keep me fresh. It's quite enjoyable how audiences differ all over the country."

Once Whistle Down The Wind ends in mid-June, he's planning a holiday before working again.

One financial deal that didn't go according to plan was producing a touring revival of Sandy Wilson's musical The Boy Friend, starring Liliane Montevecchi and Oliver Tobias. Sadly, the show collapsed through financial problems a few weeks before the end of the tour and a projected London West End transfer.

"It didn't sell as many tickets as I would have liked and cost me a great deal of money," explains Swerrun, who'd spent three years setting up the tour.

* Whistle Down The Wind: York Grand Opera House, Tuesday-Saturday. Box Office: 0870 606 3595

Published: 06/05/2004