"Finian's Rainbow' on Broadway

"Now, there's a musical!" a man sitting behind me burst out as the curtain fell on Act I. He's exactly right. Finian's Rainbow, now in gorgeous revival on Broadway, possesses all the old-fashioned charm that can make musical theater such a pleasure: great songs sung by great voices— you'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll leave humming. You'll wake up the next morning humming.

Consider: "How are Things in Glocca Morra?", "Look to the Rainbow," "Old Devil Moon," "If This Isn't Love," "Something Sort of Grandish," and "When I'm Not Near the Girl I Love," just to mention the best. Yip Harburg's lyrics are full of sweetness and witty wordplay, and not a line is wasted by a cast capable of delivering all of Burton Lane's melody without sacrificing Harburg's words.

The book is hokey, as musical comedy plots usually are, but, for a show that opened in 1947, it's startlingly relevant. After all, it begins with a foreclosure; it features an evil Senator who has never read the Constitution because he was "too busy defending it"; the Bible is replaced in the preacher's hand by a mail-order catalogue; and the problem of debt is solved by credit.

But no one with any sense attends a Broadway musical for sociopolitical insight. Enjoyment is the point, and Finian's Rainbow provides plenty.

A mythical state

The story begins when Finian McLonergan (the same superb Jim Norton who won the Tony for The Seafarer) and his beauty of a daughter, redheaded and (it goes without saying) feisty Sharon (silver-voiced Kate Baldwin), arrive in the mythical American state of Missitucky. Finian has a crock of gold he stole from leprechauns in Ireland, and when he hides the treasure under a tree, the land becomes enchanted and valuable. (Never mind the political incorrectness of tobacco as the local cash crop.)

The black sharecroppers and the white farmers unite, and Woody Mahoney (hunky Cheyenne Jackson) returns to save the day and fall for Sharon (cue the moonlight— the lighting design surprises us continually, as though we were children at a magic show). The cast includes the requisite big momma (Terri White, who belts out "Necessity" to raise the roof) and a chorus of dancers capable of executing sensational mid-air splits, not to mention a nifty Irish jig. And Silent Susan (Alina Fay) dances her thoughts to the accompaniment of Guy Davis's astonishing harmonica.

The leprechaun returns

Woody and Sharon's romance progresses happily until the leprechaun Og (nimble and funny Christopher Fitzgerald, who can not only sing and dance and act but also perform sleight of hand magic tricks) appears to reclaim his gold and the wishes it can grant. But Og discovers love and then a human world full of women (as he sings: "When I'm not facing the face that I fancy/I fancy the face I face").

The theme is transformations: That's what wishes are for. The bigoted white Senator turns black, the green leprechaun turns human, mute Susan speaks, and as the song goes, "When the Idle Poor Become the Idle Rich," they learn, as they must, that love and friendship beat bling every time. This is musical comedy, after all.