On a Clear Day You Can See Forever – Irish Repertory Theatre, New York

Craig Waletzko, Melissa Errico and William Bellamy in Irish Rep’s On a Clear Day You Can See Forever. Picture: Carol Rosegg

On a Clear Day You Can See Forever continues at the Irish Repertory Theatre, New York until 12 August 2018.

Star rating: four stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ✩

On a Clear Day You Can See Forever is a tough show to reproduce. One big reason: its leading role was created specifically for a one-of-a-kind Broadway talent.

The character is Daisy Gamble, a pleasingly daffy but seemingly inconsequential denizen of 1960s New York. However, Daisy can talk to flowers and make them grow like crazy. She also has ESP – extrasensory perception. She can tell you to answer the phone before it rings.

Furthermore, she is the reincarnation of a beautiful aristocratic belle of 18th century England, named Melinda. And when Daisy goes to a psychiatrist to cure her smoking habit, he hypnotises her, and lo and behold, the hypnosis causes Melinda and her milieu to materialise, pulling the psychiatrist along.

Now, an interesting triangle develops. The psychiatrist Mark is quite taken with Melinda, while Daisy has fallen in love with Mark. Things, of course, work out fine, but not before we get to get to witness an old-time shipwreck and wait in an airport for a potential airplane crash to be avoided. 

As you probably have recalled by now, Clear Day – along with its tailor-made leading lady conundrum – is cursed with an imaginative but unwieldly book that seems to invite endless, sometimes disastrous tinkering. 

The original production, back in 1965, didn’t do too well. It starred an ecstatically reviewed Barbara Harris, whose unique blend of kookiness, vulnerability and womanliness made her a favourite of critics and audiences. But overall, the show, which features book and lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner and music by Burton Lane, received mixed notices and lasted just a little more than 200 performances.

Still, the piece continues to be a lure for musical theatre-makers, with its temptation for starry leading lady types and its inspired score.  

A 1970 movie version headlining another unique talent, Barbra Streisand, was not a Streisand triumph. In 2000, the esteemed Encores! series reaped another mixed reception for its concert presentation starring Broadway darling Kristen Chenoweth. Then, a 2011 Broadway revival, with a drastically rewritten book, was something like a calamity. It changed Daisy to a gay man, served up gender problems like scrambled eggs and closed down after 29 previews and 57 performances. 

Now, the increasingly admirable Off-Broadway company, Irish Repertory Theatre, is trying its hand with Clear Day. And why, you may ask, is Irish Rep, dedicated to things Hibernian, doing this? Well, last year the company had a resounding success with Finian’s Rainbow, boasting music by Burton Lane (along with lyrics by E.Y. Harburg and book by Harburg and Fred Saidy).

Now, as the company simply states in its promotional material, it “is proud to present Burton Lane’s other great Broadway musical”. And as with Finian’s Rainbow, the notable leading lady is Melissa Errico. 

While the Irish Rep production doesn’t turn this half-ugly duckling of a show into a totally beautiful swan, it certainly makes the point that it’s worth trying. There’s enough rich musical balm for the audience’s ears to make it more than worth the time spent clucking over the bumpy script.

The orchestrations by Josh Clayton for the five-piece orchestra, have a glistening chamber music sound, providing perfect accompaniment for the vocal talents of the cast, talents that are pretty much beyond reproach. John Bell is the music director, Gary Adler the conductor and M. Florian Staab the sound designer.

In a score that goes from brilliantly catchy to rapturous, Errico delivers her big numbers with grand aplomb, giving full value to Lerner’s witty, wise and expressive lyrics and Lane’s lush melodies. 

They include Daisy’s bouncy beckoning to her flowers, ‘Hurry! It’s Lovely Up Here!’; her joyful description of a boat ride with Mark, ‘On the S.S. Bernard Cohn’; the tremendously torchy ‘What Did I Have That I Don’t Have’, and the thrilling love song, ‘He Wasn’t You’, also sung as a duet with operatic intensity with John Cudia, playing Melinda’s womanising husband. 

As the psychiatrist, Stephen Bogardus does equal justice to the score, bringing pinpoint clarity and musicality to the exhilarating plea to a Daisy who’s gone into hiding, ‘Come Back to Me’; the ode to her other self, ‘Melinda’, and the title song. That eponymous number also serves as an overture and a finale with gorgeous choral harmonising. 

The adaptation by director Charlotte Moore, Irish Rep’s artistic director, has also astutely trimmed the proceedings. She has eliminated some characters and songs, so that the main plot line survives to be neatly handled by a company of 11 actors.

However, the transitions between contemporary New York and old-time England, with actors carrying on the costume changes for Errico’s Daisy-cum-Melinda, are a bit awkward. And as the folks of London or New York go into production numbers featuring Barry McNabb’s serviceable choreography, within Mark’s office or elsewhere, the small Irish Rep stage begins to look uncomfortably cluttered. The set design and sketch-like projections by James Morgan and Ryan Belock and the costumes by Whitney Locher help distinguish what’s going on and where but don’t add much visual glamour.  

Furthermore, when the music stops, Errico has to contend with a role that after all these years is still pretty much owned by Harris. Errico, a celebrated Broadway and Off-Broadway name, has filled such roles as the naturally beguiling Sharon in Finian’s Rainbow and the conflicted love-smitten Clara of Passion with an affecting sincerity. But Daisy’s oblique kookiness is not a natural fit for her, and this stretches just a bit more the strains and stresses in Lerner’s plotting.

Nevertheless, when a show boasts a score like this one, maybe it’s time to just ignore its deficiencies, and like a Stephen Sondheim opus with similar plot problems, let it just merrily roll along its merry way…perhaps forever. 

Ron Cohen