MUSICAL WITH A SOCIAL HEART
Musical With a Social Heart Joseph T. Shipley ON THE STAGE A GOODLY TREASURE TROVE "FINI V'S RAINBOW." Book by E. Y. Ha,burg and Fred Saidy. Lyrics by Burton Lane. Directed by Bretaigne...
...Billboard'is still railing...
...KatzelL At the 46th Street Theatre...
...I have rarely seen an audience so lifted and borne forward with a musical, in an ever rising surge of enthusiasm and enjoyment...
...Because there is gold burled at Fort Knox...
...Love songs come in varied profusion: "If this isn't love...
...David Wayne lilts this sprite with a tender whimsy...
...He has filched it from a leprechaun and hurried to the United States, to bury it in soil of Rainbow Valley, Missitucky...
...Tuneful and accordant, if not Inspired, music builds clever lyrics- into delightful songs...
...In this play, too, the pot at the end of Finian's rainbow proves dross in itself, but brings credit that brings machines, work, prosperity, to Rainbow .Valley...
...For the evening offers a heart-warming quality I have not yet told...
...And Ella Logan, as his daughter Sharon, brings a homelike but mischievous charm, and a full command of the stage...
...He is disconsolate...
...In the lyrics, E. Y. Harburg is at his best...
...Beneath and all around and within the movement of the evening is the breath of human fellowship...
...They flow naturally with the other aspects of the play's plenty...
...There is "something sort of grandish'^in his gallanting ways...
...This is but another hue of the many spread in the great colored arc across the sky of the evening...
...Here Sonny Terry is playing his harmonica, and the country folk come and dance...
...and he takes to tots with a childlike, heartfelt joy...
...Thus—while we might dispense with Og's references to the wee, wee house with the half-moon on the door—there is fit symbolism in the chamber-pot, sign of an outgrown system, that is discarded when Finian's gold becomes the truer gold of human happiness...
...Senator Billboard rails upon the Negroes...
...And at once the play establishes itself: there is an assured note of authority.in that set, and in that dancing...
...This' is a work to be enjoyed...
...The play opens at the outdoor "meetin' place" of Rain-' bow Valley, where rocks lead down to a clearing before an old, gnarled tree...
...just there, part of the spirit of these folk, as it should be part of you and me...
...They dug and dug, and never found hoarded metai...
...In addition to the group dances, he has woven some superb solos for Anita Alvarez...
...Yet there is more...
...Finian wants prosperity and happiness to spring for his daughter Sharon...
...This holds both satire and wisdom...
...And from that buried gib1 spring mills in Pennsylvania, factories in Michigan, skyscrape, s in New York...
...Costumes by Eleanor Goldsmith, 'horeography by Michael Kidd...
...A social conscience infuses the whole—not preached...
...They laugh, in ringing song, at old "Necessity...
...Bu Og, the leprechaun, follows Finian...
...For Finian is played by Albert Sharpe (veteran actor of the Emerald Isle), with a kindly, tipsy, quirky, irresponsible quality that seems funny almost in spite of itself...
...There is an ancient parable, of a farmer who, on his death-bed, told his sons a treasure lay buried in his farm...
...Here, already, is enough for any good musical to envy...
...Old Devil Moon in y'our eyes...
...In the same flow, it is pleasant to note that among the country folk in the cast, Negroes and whites are equally intermingled...
...Scenery ami lighting by Jo Mielxiner...
...talks with her feet—Anita has one spectacular number when, to the music of Sonny Terry's harmonica, she clambers down from the old, gnarled tree, and takes the stage, the leprechaun's pot of gold, and the audience's heart...
...and the re-whitened Senator is a wiser, prejudice-free man...
...The lines flash constantly with wit, and with the mellower, often topsyturvy, forms of humor...
...Tobacco workers of Rainbow Valley, black and white, are gay despite their poverty...
...With the help of the McLonergan funds, they stand against Senator Billboard Rawkins, who wants to keep them all "in their place...
...Nostalgia1 glows In "How are things in Glocca Morra...
...These touchstones of humanity, I repeat, do not obtrude...
...And that is a horrid fortune, as every mortal can tell...
...Around these songs the dancers swirl, in gay and sesty swelling patterns delightfully arranged by Michael Kidd...
...Mingling many moods into a single flow, this musical leads us along the rainbow to th . pot of gold...
...Presented by Lee Sabinson and Wm...
...More gold than the leprechaun's comes from Ireland...
...As Susan—born dumb...
...Finisa's Rainbow" is superb, unique...
...Finian McLonergan has "borrowed" a pot of gold, back in Glocca Morra, Ireland...
...Finian's Rainbow" brings a great pot of golden satisfaction, to fill your heart...
...Sharon cries "I wish you were black...
...The leprechaun remarks that an error was made: he was changed outside, when he should have been changed inside...
...mischief—caught even in the scenery...
...Directed by Bretaigne Windust...
...This inner change the leprechaun proceeds to effect...
...For, besides the three magic wishes that go with the pot of gold, without it, turns mortal...
...He seems like a fusion of lolanthe's son Strephon, half fairy and half mortal, snd Peter Pan...
...and when the buried gold impresses Shears and Roebust, they go on a splurge through the catalogue in a burst of spendiferous glory for that "Great ComeandrGet-it Day"—with a satirical side-splitting spectacle "When the idle poor become the idle rich...
...All of these elements are caught up by Bretaigne Windust's brilliant directing, and carried along in a single drive of increasing delight...
...Note, also, the pot of gold...
...She doesn't know it, but she is standing over the leprechauns crack: at once Billboard changes color...
...Then Og meets him...
...But theirs was the most fertile farm in the countrysile...
...All this gives the authors an opportunity in which they revel...
...Look to the Rainbow," and the leprechaun's mortal awakening: "When I'm not near the girl I love, I love the girl I'm near...
...She is a pert and wistful damsel, tojfill a fellow's heart...
...This leprechaunlsh background gives the play a perky hen{ of fae...
...It is a masterly blend of theatrical appeals, stirring the mind and quickening the heart...
...Add to the Irish .bounty Og, the leprechaund...
...In addition to the folksy songs mentioned above ("Necessity" and "Great Come-and-Get-it Day"), there is a lively spiritual, by the "Passion Pilgrim Gospelers," that goes back to the Bible and to Eve, to "Begin the Begat" that begot us sons and daughters of Adam...
...At least, until Og, like Sharon—and Woody, and Susan— discovc a love...
...Why...
...These Irish qualities intertwine with the folksy strain of the SoUth...
Vol. 30 • January 1947 • No. 4
