Julie Andrews is one of the most renowned musical theater actresses in the history of the stage and screen. She was Mary Poppins, Maria von Trapp, Victor and Victoria. She was Eliza Doolittle to Rex Harrison's Henry Higgins, Guinevere to Richard Burton's Arthur and Robert Goulet's Lancelot.

But "The Boy Friend" is where it all started for Andrews, born Julia Elizabeth Wells. Andrews honed her stage skills in the United Kingdom's vaudeville circuit touring Christmas pantomime shows with her family before moving to New York and The Great White Way. The timing could not have been better for a beautiful 19-year-old Englishwoman.

Her starring role in "The Boy Friend" tipped the first domino, and more than 50 years later they're still tumbling.

" 'The Boy Friend' came at exactly the right moment - we were an English piece, and it fit in well with the times - and it was a year of learning my craft, practicing comedy and pacing and just scrambling to catch up with the big success that we were," Andrews said last week by telephone from Los Angeles, where she lives with her husband, film director Blake Edwards. "I suddenly found my name in lights above the marquee.

"I was a singer and did not have much training about anything and was very green and learning on my feet. I was very unsure of what it was I could contribute to the show."

She completed her relationship with "The Boy Friend" - an homage to the musicals of '20s and '30s - by directing the show a few years ago. A revival is touring and opens at the Buell Theatre tonight.

Andrews said her main concern when she dreamed up the revival was the play's sustained appeal. Would this shiny, happy musical, written in the '50s about the '20s, hold up in the '00s?

"I'm happy to say, the more I examined the piece, 'The Boy Friend' itself, I saw that it's very well constructed," said Andrews, who made a few modifications to the work, reducing it from three acts to two.

"I tried in my production to take the campiness out of it and make it more lovable and less silly in a way, because it had the potential for falling in that gap," she said. "I wanted to make it more real, because it holds up so well. The laughs are there, but I didn't lampoon the '20s. I treated it with respect."

Andrews has often compared "The Boy Friend" to a little piece of lace, referencing its delicate nature. But now she has a new metaphor for the musical she often refers to as "endearing" and "sweet."

"It's like the bubbles in the champagne glass," she said. "It's a gentle piece, but it's very effervescent."

Her current relationship with "The Boy Friend" couldn't be more different than her earlier experiences. When she starred in the show, her own responsibilities were burden enough.

"Now I have to have my eyes and ears and senses everywhere," she said. "It's suddenly bigger, like seeing something in widescreen as opposed to through a telescope."

Andrews made her directorial debut a family affair. The play was mounted at the Bay Street Theatre in Sag Harbor, N.Y., which is run by her daughter, Emma Walton Hamilton. The sets and costumes, still used today, were created by Andrews' first husband (and Hamilton's father), Tony Walton.

"It's one thing to fail, but to fail for family, I'd have to live with them for the rest of my life," she said. "My daughter assured me that of all the places to try, her theater was the best place to start and that she'd surround me with all the right people and help."

One of those people was University of Northern Colorado graduate Jenny Fellner, who played the comedic sidekick Dulcie in "The Boy Friend's" Sag Harbor run before moving on to the leading role of Sophie in "Mamma Mia!" on Broadway.

While Andrews' great passion is musicals, she has plenty of other work to keep her busy, including her biography, self- penned children's books and a PBS children's show tentatively titled "Julie's Carousel."