Something Sort of Grandish

Review: Finian's Rainbow
St. James Theatre, New York
January 6, 2010

Leprechauns! Pots o' gold! Sudden romance! Then, on the turn of a dime... credit crisis and deep-seeded racism? With one of the most inventive, stylistically diverse, fanciful scores written for the theater, the 1947 musical Finian's Rainbow is an old devil indeed. It's a strikingly curious work, swooning one moment and satirical the next.

A run-of-the-mill forties chorus opens the show, harmonizing about mortgage, but before we can catch up, the sweet-and-sour melody of "How Are Things in Glocca Morra?" unwinds. Bewitched are we by the pixieish whimsy of this half-Irish fable, but bothered and bewildered soon follow. By the end of act one, an Irish lass whose father has hidden a magic pot of gold in the poor Southern county of Missitucky wishes a bigoted white senator to turn black. When Shears and Roebust (the satire is never hard to identify) are alerted to gold in their land, the town goes shopping, naively believing in the power of credit.

The pleasures of songwriters Burton Lane and Yip Harburg, famous for The Wizard of Oz's songs, are too great to portend anything but a happy ending. Lovers are united; racism and poverty overcome! It's to the credit of director Warren Carlyle that the current staging stays simple, finding the delicate tinge of sadness within the fantasy. For what is a rainbow without rain?

Out of a uniformly excellent cast, Jim Norton and Kate Baldwin as immigrant Finian McLonergan and daughter Sharon contribute most to the gentle wistful spirit. After years playing Irish drama, Norton is down-to-earth yet light as air, a permanent twinkle in his eye like a septuagenarian cherub. The sweet and spirited Baldwin sings "Glocca Morra" as naturally as breathing, then becomes more vivacious in her duet "Something Sort of Grandish" with the leprechaun Og. As played by Christopher Fitzgerald, the increasingly mortal Og is as human as the rest (but still as eccentric as his environment). Eyes agog, spring in his step, Fitzgerald lands the comedy with frequent subtlety.

The full ensemble, especially Terri White in one socko gospel spot, prospers vocally, with no small thanks to an orchestra of twenty-seven. Rumors circled these past weeks that Andrew Lloyd Webber, of all people, would finance this fine revival to relocate to a smaller theater in the spring. Alas, fleeting whimsy; their run ends this Sunday. How apt for the show's final moment: Finian, with his pot of gold turned to dross, ventures off toward another valley, to the hill beyond yon hill. He leaves their world all the better for having known him. May we all meet again in Glocca Morra one fine day.