Tis Wonderfulish: Yip Yip Hooray for Finian's Rainbow

Forget Washington, DC for the moment. Hope, happiness and the promise of change have touched down at the St. James Theater, although re-emerging from an earlier era, courtesy of Burton Lane (music), Fred Saidy (book) and "Yip" (Isidore Hochberg) Harburgh (lyrics and book). This wonderful and lively musical, combining song and dance, Broadway standards, Irish music, gospel and blues with a sincere progressive message combined with warm sentiment and broad comedy is a delight.

Jim Norton as Finian; Kate Baldwin as his daughter Sharon; Cheyenne Jackson as Woody; Christopher Fitzgerald as the remarkable leprechaun Og; Terri White as Dottie, belting out a remarkable "Necessity"; Chuck Cooper as the post-wishful gospel singing senator Rawkins; William Youmans (who we last caught in his amazing performance as the melting/shrinking evil mother/witch in "Coraline" off-off Broadway at MCC) as Buzz; Guy Davis as Sunny; Alina Fey as Susan---the talent of this ensemble cast seems endless. Up, down and all around Rainbow Valley in Missitucky, it's a play with so much heart and soul that by curtain you think you might bust.

The progressive message of equality is anti-consumerist and anti-corporate but actually rails against greed in all its forms (remember credit swaps, anyone?) And while Harburgh took a swipe at the GOP, his major target is the racist Senator Rawkings, based on real racist/red-neck Democratic senators of the era. Although it seems to be teetering close to the rails of cornpone and historical naivete, in an era that elected the first Black U.S. President, there is an essential sincerity here, which may be why "Finians Rainbow" still seems to be playing to packed houses while "RagTime" with its more complex and darker tones, is posting a closing notice.

Yip, Yip, where are you now that your nation needs you? Despite the accomplishment of 44 in D.C., Harburgh, who was too much the artist and iconoclast to belong to the Communist Party, would not be loathe to challenge the inconsistencies and confusion of the not-so-new administration. As I recall, Harburgh also wrote:
"Democracy gives you a choice, of which machine to vote with/Or choose which brand of razor blade/You'd rather cut your throat with."

Leaving the theater, some of the audience was crowded around the stage door. When Cheyenne Jackson emerged, bundled against the cold. He smiled and his first words to a youngster proferring a playbill and a pen was "Where are your gloves?"

More on Yip Harburgh here.

The N.Y. Times' Edward Rothstein muses on Yip Harburgh's "Grandish Wordplay" in "Finian's Rainbow," "The Wizard of Oz," "Flahoolie," and other works.