Over theRainbow

Goodspeed's tale of leprechauns is golden

by Steve Vineberg

FINIAN'S RAINBOW. Book by E.Y. Harburg and Fred Saidy. Music by Burton Lane. Lyrics by E.Y. Harburg. Directed by Gabriel Barre. Choreographed by Jennifer Paulson Lee. Musical direction by Michael O'Flaherty. Sets designed by James M. Youmans. Costumes by Pamela Scofield. Lighting by Phil Monat. With James Judy, Erin Dilly, David M. Lutken, Robert Creighton, Jennifer Paulson Lee, Ron Wisniski, Bill Kocis, and Jasper R. McGruder. At the Goodspeed Opera House, East Haddam, Connecticut, through July 4.

Watching the marvelous 50th-anniversary production of Finian's Rainbow at the Goodspeed Opera House, you might wonder why Burton Lane, the composer of the enchanting score, was attached to so few subsequent musicals. (Aficionados will recall he did On a Clear Day You Can See Forever with Alan Jay Lerner two decades later.) Finian's Rainbow, in which Lane collaborated with E.Y. Harburg, contains 11 songs, eight or nine of which are beauties, though only one, "Old Devil Moon," became a standard.

Finian's Rainbow doesn't receive many professional revivals -- mainly, I suspect, because the failure of the 1968 movie version by Francis Ford Coppola cast a pall over the show and stuck it with a reputation for being embarrassingly dated. Actually, the movie wasn't all that awful, and the script (by Harburg and Fred Saidy) feels rather progressive for 1947, though its mixture of whimsy, sentimentality, and social commentary doesn't whip up right. Two plots intertwine -- though not until just before intermission. One involves the emigration of an Irishman named Finian McLonergan (James Judy) and his daughter Sharon (Erin Dilly) to America, where he believes he can grow rich by planting the crock of gold he stole from the leprechauns. (His theory is that Americans plant their gold at Fort Knox so that it can grow and spread wealth all over the nation.) He's pursued to Rainbow Valley, Missitucky by one of the wee people, Og (Robert Creighton), who's anxious to get the gold back before he and his brethren lose their powers and turn mortal. The other storyline focuses on the economic oppression of the Rainbow Valley sharecroppers, black and white, at the hands of a bigoted senator (Ron Wisniski). Their leader is Woody Mahoney (David M. Lutken), a union organizer who falls in love with Sharon.

It's easy to point out the problems in the script, but the ebullience and charm of the Goodspeed production override them. The director, Gabriel Barre, and the inventive, risk-taking choreographer, Jennifer Paulson Lee, working in tandem with the set designer, James M. Youmans, give the show the spirited, stylized, joyously claustrophobic look of Thomas Hart Benton paintings. The main set is a verdant mound on a revolve with a lopsided, moon-dappled, crazy-quilt landscape for a backdrop. Some two dozen singers and dancers cavort across it in constantly surprising combinations -- and a number of them play instruments, too. (Jasper R. McGruder, in the harmonica-playing role that Sonny Terry created on Broadway, doubles on flute.)

On the whole, there's less craftsmanship in the acting than in the singing and dancing: James Judy and Erin Dilly are overzealous vaudevillians in their scenes together, and I wanted to sedate Robert Creighton's Og. But Judy's performance acquires a more delicate sweetness as the evening wears on, and Dilly relaxes whenever she gets to sing -- especially in her duets with David M. Lutken. Woody is written as a fond parody of Woody Guthrie, a concept Barre takes as far as he can in this production. Lutken has Guthrie's implausible lankiness and opium-dreamer's eyes; he's about as endearing as a leading man can be, and when he opens his mouth to sing "Old Devil Moon" or "If This Isn't Love" or the glorious, gospel-infected first-act finale "That Great Come-and-Get-It Day," he's somehow both crooner and folkie. Lee, the choreographer, is equally memorable as Woody's mute sister Susan (they're even a physical match), who "talks" in dance. Susan the Silent is a role I've always assumed was unplayable; Lee makes it work by infusing it with emotion.

Almost every musical number is a highlight (Andrew Wilder and Michael O'Flaherty deserve to be lauded for the orchestrations and the musical direction, respectively). But I'd single out "This Time of the Year" (the opening), "Old Devil Moon," "That Great Come-and-Get-It Day" (both in act one and in its reprise at the curtain call), and "The Begat," a quartet elegantly performed by Andre Ward, J. Cameron Barnett, Tim Johnson, and Ron Wisniski. This Finian's Rainbow drives from scene to scene and number to number; it has both fluidity and unflagging energy, so that even the wettest moments (as in the "Look to the Rainbow" number) don't weigh it down. The performers play it as if they were on holiday, and that feeling carries into the audience.