Ken Jennings and Melissa Errico             photos by Carol Rosegg

 

                                                             by Eugene Paul

 

Just say Finian’s Rainbow and a glow begins to emit, surely a built in protection concocted by leprechauns, what with the biggest and best leprechaun ever to appear in any of the many reappearances of  Finian’s Rainbow making his appearance in this lugubriously  put together version here at the Irish Rep. He’s Mark Evans, and every time he’s on, the show lights up and is on track to where it ought to go. But Og – he plays Og, the leprechaun chasing after his stolen pot of gold – has only one of the story lines still alive in director Charlotte Moore’s well meaning but hapless revamping of what many would call a dated script and others might call a vital lesson.

 

Mark Evans and Melissa Errico

 

Regardless, nothing can kill the songs.  And everyone waits for the songs. The story itself is a charming pastiche of whimsical nonsense lightly covering a much darker America than we choose to remember, which has never really disappeared. (Viz: current election.) It’s 1940’s in deepest Missatucky at a tobacco plantation, and, egged on by low life henchman Buzz Collins (Matt Gibson) that the taxes are due, the workers are singing a surprisingly engaging “This Time of Year”. Until you winkle out the  stoically cynical, funny lyrics rhyming” this time of year” with “you‘ll get it in the rear” and you realize that  that Rainbow Valley,Missatucky isn’t the best place in the world. Which Sharon (Melissa Errico) and her father Finian(Ken Jennings) aren’t long in discovering.  They’re on the run all the way from Ireland, as brogues and the next song will lovingly tell you.

 

Which happens to be the ever enchanting “How Are Things in Glocca Morra?”And even in Errico’s pallid rendering it glows.  Which is why we’re here.  And why are Sharon and her father here?  Because Finian stole the leprechaun’s pot of gold and the end of the rainbow indicated that they ought to come here, to Rainbow Valley, not too far from Fort Knox.  Also, because Finian staunchly maintains he did not steal the pot of gold he just borrowed it to plant near Fort Knox where lots of gold is planted and multiplies.  All Finian wants is for this pot of gold to multiply.  So he  hides it.  And here they are until the pot grows more gold. And as everyone is entitled to know, along with the pot comes three wishes, which has somehow been smoothed out in the modernizing smoothing out  along with other aged bumps perceived in the script, which leaves the script more or less a series of songs sung straight out at the audience with the show kind of continuing around each song number.  Thank Heaven for the songs.

 

Because the other plot – yes, there’s more – has to do with racial bigotry and when bigot Senator Rawkins (DeweyCadell) threatens our workers  loss of jobs, evictions and worse,  he’s taught a vivid lesson:  he turns black. How? Well, in case you miss it in the smoothed out version, it’s through the inadvertent first wish said near the hidden pot of gold.

 

Melissa Errico & Ryan Silverman

 

But before that happens there’s such gold in the intervening songs you don’t mind a bit:  “Look to the Rainbow”, sheer heaven.  “Old Devil Moon” , heaven again, and another plot, Sharon falling in love with Woody.  Who’s Woody?  Originally, he’s a highly charismatic union organizer.  Now, he’s Ryan Silverman who looks good playing Woody but seems more like Wooden. More smoothing out. Ah, well. Wooden has a sister, Susan the Silent, who does not or cannot speak and thus communicates by dancing. 

 

And here, director Moore runs entirely off the rails by casting Lyrica Woodruff, a ravishing ballerina, to perform as Susan but she is so divine she makes everything else look superklutzy, and who needs that?

 

Things get back to reality – sort of -- with that wowser song,”Necesssity”, knocked out by Sally Ann (Angela Grovey) and the fine company  and   Og, the large leprechaun, who is growing more and more human now that he’s lost his pot of gold, singing a love of a song with Sharon,”Something Sort of Grandish”.

 

Oh, there are at least a half dozen more songs just as wonderful – “If This Isn’t Love”, “That Great Come-and-Get-It Day”, “When the Idle Poor Become The Idle Rich”, “The Begat”, “When I’m Not Near the Girl I Love” --  and when you think of the starved musicals we bear these days it hurts.  Burton Lane and Yip Harburg have written one of the great scores in the history of the theatre, all of the songs standout, yet neatly fitting the wild and wooly story.  They are backed with enormous vigor – too much, actually, very distracting because they’re there  up stage, by a bouncy quartet taking our eyes away from the show.  They’d be better off in the lovely arbor off behind the lovely columns and lovely vines and ivies created by set designer James Morgan for the exasperatingly awkward Irish Rep stage.

 

                                       

Finian’s Rainbow. At the Irish Repertory Theatre, 132 West 22^nd Street; Tickets: $50-$70. 866-811-4111. Two hrs. Thru Dec 31.