If the music and dancing were enough this would be a much happier occasion, but there is a book too and time has not been very kind to it. That is the main problem with director/ choreographer Warren Carlyle's in and out revival of Finian's Rainbow. It has it's good points, mainly the still memorable music by Burton Lane and some of Yip Harburg's best lyrics, but the book that Mr Harburg wrote with Fred Saidy really does not hold up very well.
It is a fantasy about an old Irishman who comes to this country with a magic pot of gold which he has filched from a leprechaun and the trouble he get into. It must have been funny and satirical back in 1947 when it was first produced, and I thought it was enchanting in a 1960 Broadway revival, but in 2009 it's edge is gone, and at times it creaks with age.
The show is fine in it's musical sequences and the original orchestrations byRobert Russell Bennett and Don Walker and played by an exellent pit orchestra conducted by Rob Berman give the songs a rich full sound.
The cast is fine as well with Jim Norton and Kate Baldwin especially good as the Irishman and his daughter and Christopher Fitzgerald has fun as the leprechaun.
Every so often Finian's Rainbow does take off and become an enjoyable show,but for the most part this revival is firmly earthbound.
AT THE ST. JAMES THEATRE 246 WEST 44th STREET N. Y. C.
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Another revival that doesn't rival the original, which starred a wonderful Ella Logan (Aunt of Annie Ross of Lambert, Hendricks and Ross.) The ad for the original called it "A completely captivating musical.)
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