February 17, 2011
By Staff Reporter
The Boucicault classic was an apt choice to close out the pre-renovation phase of the old Westport theater’s life, since it was the same play, without the Irish Rep’s musical additions, which had opened the theater more than seven decades earlier.
Now, after 21 months of intensive reconstruction, the Westport Country Playhouse is open again, with an enthusiastic ceremony this past Saturday evening. The guest company, once again, was the Irish Rep, with their rollicking “concert version” of the classic American musical, “Finian’s Rainbow,” which, last season, had provided the group with one of its greatest successes.
As was the case with “The Streets of New York,” the breadth and depth of the Connecticut stage added to the impact and the general effectiveness of the show, allowing the entire endeavor to breathe a little easier and even stretch out a bit.
“Finian’s Rainbow” is, of course, the Broadway fable concerning an Irish immigrant, Finian McLonergan, who brings his beautiful daughter, Sharon, to the American state of “Missitucky” without informing her that he has stolen a leprechaun’s legendary pot of gold in order to finance the trip and their new life in the United States.
The show, with an imperishable score by composer Burton Lane and lyricist E.Y. “Yip” Harburg, was one of the first major Broadway hits to come along after World War II, despite its somewhat awkward and decidedly ersatz “Irish” libretto.
With its original stars, Ella Logan as Sharon and David Wayne as Og, the leprechaun, the show enjoyed a lengthy run, and was eventually made in an unsuccessful film in 1968 by Francis Ford Coppola, one of the director’s greatest failures. Fred Astaire was oddly miscast as Finian, while Petula Clark and Tommy Steele were, at best, passable. Oddly, the film version was allowed to ramble on for an intolerable 145 minutes.
In adapting the show fir its “concert version,” director Charlotte Moore has wisely kept the original period, 1947, with its returning war hero and its pre-integration racism, trimmed Fred Saidy’s creaky book, and created a nameless narrator to carry the ball over the book’s roughest terrain.
For Westport, the Rep has been fortunate in retaining its original Sharon the splendid Melissa Errico, and, for the most part been successful in its replacements, particularly in the case of the perky Milo O’Shea, who, unsurprisingly, brings a rich whimsicality and a particularly welcome and genuine Irishness to the role of Finian.
Stephen R. Buntrock is a sturdy and credible leading man as Woody Mahoney, returning from the war just in time to save the valley from destruction at corrupt corporate and governmental hands.
Most of the original cast is solidly in place, with Malcolm Gets repeating his performance as a conspicuously energetic Og, and Kimberly Dawn Newmann back again as Woody’s mute sister, Susan, who must dance out her feelings, not to mention a good bit of the plot, because of her inability to speak.
As before, David Staller, better known as a singer than as an actor, faces up to his narrator chores boldly and unashamedly, and, as a result pulls them off to great audience response, and, it would seem, his own abundant satisfaction, which is entirely fitting, given the circumstances.
As familiar, and as frequently recorded, as its songs are, “Finian’s Rainbow” has had only insignificant revivals in the 58 years since it was created, a situation which seems to be a result of its old-fashioned book.
What other Broadway show has eve produced quite as many standards as this one, with gems ranging from “How Are Things in Glocca Morra?” and “Look to the Rainbow” to “Old Devil Moon” and “If this Isn’t Love,” not to mention brilliant novelty songs such as “Necessity,” “The Begat” and “When the Idle Poor Become the Idle Rich.”
The show’s musical glories just keep on flowing from the stage, in the capable hands of pianists Mark Hartman and Mark Janus, with Edward Alex on the piccolo and Ron Jackson playing banjo, guitar and harmonica. Hartman also serves ably as the production’s musical director.
In Westport, as in New York, the show is played in front of a vast background on which is printed a fragment of the score. New at Westport are three massive square columns, festooned with flowering vines.
In a nice irony, “Yip” Harburg, one of the greatest lyricists the Broadway theater has ever produced, has, only a few weeks ago, been honored as the subject of a new $.37 commemorative stamp.