"Rainbow" High

If you have to go through five weeks without live music, you could have a much worse send-off than The Lovely Wife(tm) and I got last night, when we caught Irish Rep's sublime concert staging of Finian's Rainbow.

Now, I've always been a huge fan of the score, and was never quite sure why people thought the show was unrevivable (even the movie screenplay, which I've read, seemed fairly tame). After last night, I'm even more confused. Yes, some of the satire is heavy-handed, but I saw nothing offensive, and the book is no clunkier than many other shows of its time. But oh, the talent on that stage. No less than three faves of mine from the piano bar circuit (musical directors Mark Hartman and Mark Janas, and the indominable Terri White), joined a sterling cast including a riotous Malcolm Gets, the gloriously-voiced Melissa Errico (although how you can lose your Irish brogue singing "How are Things in Glocca Morra?" escapes me), and Jonathan Freeman, who is simply one of the best musical comedy character actors of this era. Kimberly Dawn Neumann risked life and limb (hers and her cast members) dancing up a storm on the postage-stamp stage as Silent Susan, and ohhh, the joy of hearing Yip Harburg's words superbly sung. What that man did with the English language would have any lesser lyricist arrested and his rhyming dictionary confiscated, but he made it work, and work superbly.