OFF THE RAILS OR THEATRICAL TRAIN WRECKS - Part Four

OFF THE RAILS OR THEATRICAL TRAIN WRECKS

Part Four

And now the show that, after forty years as the Gold Standard of Theatrical Train Wrecks, booted Wild and Wonderful from its pedestal. It deserves a blog post all its own. It was a re-imagined revival or "revision" or whatever the hell they called it of one of my personal favorites. Here it is. Drum roll, please!

ON A CLEAR DAY YOU CAN SEE FOREVER – St. James Theatre

I thought the marquee, though bright and colorful, was pretty ugly. Especially when compared to the design for the 1965 cast recording. It's pretty obvious that Harry Connick, Jr. was the main thing here and not the show itself.

December, 2011. Blessed with one of the finest scores from the sixties, and arguably among the best from any decade (lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner/music by Burton Lane), On a Clear Day You Can See Forever was perversely cursed with a problematic and muddy book. When it kept to its basic story -- that of a mid-1960s lass, Daisy, who is the reincarnation of a late 18th century English woman, Melinda, and the psychiatrist who falls for Melinda -- everything chugged along nicely. When it veered off course, however, that's when trouble occurred. Why is this character here? Why is this song there? Why is Dr. Bruckner being mean to Daisy and whatever happened to his professional ethics? Overall, though, it's a pleasant diversion and, actually, one of my favorite shows. Part of the charm is that the same actress plays both Daisy and Melinda and, with a talented performer (Barbara Harris in the original; the sensational Barbara Lang on tour), the part(s) can be a true tour de force. It had a modest nine-month run on Broadway, a year-long national tour, and then, sadly, a monumental flop of a film version, starring a woefully miscast Barbra Streisand, who mugged her way through the picture. Until 2011, it had not had a full-blown Broadway revival. Enter Michael Mayer, Tony-winning director for Spring Awakening, who decided, apparently with the blessing of the Alan Jay Lerner estate (they must have been on some really heavy duty drugs), to "re-conceive" ("Danger, Will Robinson, danger!") Clear Day by keeping big chunks  of the original score, jettisoning the 18th century storyline, and interpolating songs from Lerner and Lane's film musical Royal Wedding and a song or two from the Clear Day film, and rethinking most of the character arcs in general. To make his vision a reality, book writer Peter Parnell was hired to refurbish the problematic and muddy Alan Jay Lerner original. The end result was even more problematic and muddier. A hot, icky mess is a better description of it. Where to start? First of all, let me state unequivocally that Clear Day needed some retooling if it had any hope of succeeding in 2011. But Mr. Parnell somehow managed to take every bit of charm and humor out of Alan Jay Lerner's book. Then the reimaginers bumped up the time period from present day (in 1965, present day was 1965) to a specified 1974. Why they just didn't figure out a way to reimagine the script to present day 2011 is beyond me. All going to the psychedelic, Me Decade 1970s did was force us to look at ugly sets and costumes and watch really cheesy choreography. But then, ah, but then, the creative power folks went on their own psychedelic trip and made Daisy/Melinda into two separate parts played by two separate actors. The fun of seeing the same actress switch characters with a change of posture, attitude and voice? Gone. And not only that, but Daisy is now David, a commitment-challenged smoker who is eager for the good doctor to cure him of the habit so he can move in with his boyfriend, and Melinda is still Melinda, but instead of being an 18th century Londoner, she's now a 1940s nightclub singer who can apparently make time travel between 1974 and the 1940s a reality, since she and the good doctor actually interact in real time or, rather, theatrical real time. In the Mayer/Parnell vision, Dr. Bruckner is now the show's central focus, a shift which causes the entire show to spin dizzily out of control. And let's not even talk about how many violations of doctor-patient ethics are shamelessly broken in this version. Yikes! With the stage presence and charm of a 2x4, Harry Connick Jr., who was sexy and fun in a revival of The Pajama Game five years earlier, bored the living crap out of me as Dr. Bruckner. Looking puffy and seriously uncomfortable, he didn't even sing all that well at the preview we attended. Kerry O'Malley was shamefully misused as Connick's adoring colleague. Sarah Stiles, as David's BFF, was bitch-slap perky and generally supremely annoying. Drew Gehling, as David's boyfriend, was not only cute as all get-out, but also the true bright spot among the supporting players. David Turner played David, née Daisy, and took the challenges and ran with them. He was as charming as the script and direction would allow him to be and really shone with the songs. His "What Did I Have That I Don't Have?" was right up there with the best and provided the show's second showstopper. (The first was Jessie Mueller's "Ev'ry Night at Seven." Connick didn't stop anything. Well, he did, but not in a good way.) Jessie Mueller, in her Broadway debut, played the new version of Melinda. Blessed with a fine voice and charisma and presence to spare, she sang the daylights out of her material, but sadly wasn't given a character, so she almost seemed like an extraneous character in the proceedings. Ironically both Jessie Mueller and David Turner could have easily played the Daisy/Melinda role with great charm and talent depending on the direction the show wanted to go in…a gay theme or the traditional one, though the former would have posed some lyric challenges for the luscious "Melinda." None of the interpolated songs quite worked, the book was part caricature, part pseudo-serious, part stereotypes, and, oddly considering that Michael Mayer is a gay man, I found it bordered on homophobic. Since the biggest problem onstage was Connick, perhaps another leading man would have better served this new vision. Will Swenson? Brian d'Arcy James? Will Chase? This handily became the new Gold Standard because they took a lovely, if flawed, property and, unforgivingly, made an unrecognizable hash of it. During the interval at our preview performance, we were standing next to Michael Mayer and some of the creatives. It was obvious something wasn't quite going the way they planned. (Really?) Mayer asked, "What do you think we should do?" I so wanted to tap him on the shoulder and say, "Close the show." The days were not clear for Clear Day. The reviews were mostly negative and the audiences did not flock to the box office for Harry Connick, Jr. The show closed after 29 previews and a paltry 57 performances. It is perhaps telling that Tams-Witmark, the show's licensing agent, only offers the original version for performance rights. – at the St. James Theatre, New York

Sidebar: I have somewhat of a history with Clear Day's delightful "Hurry! It's Lovely Up Here." When I was high school senior, I was invited to join Modern Music Masters, now Tri-M, a secondary school honor society for music. At the installation ceremony for the new members, each new member had to do some sort of musical performance. I accompanied two of my classmates as they performed an operatic aria. This in and of itself is remarkable since I can't actually play the piano, but can bang out the right notes if the piece is simple. (I also, astonishingly, during my days at ISU, played the piano, as a sort of substitute for a bass, for a campus-wide evening of musical entertainments put on by each of the dorms.) I digress. For my MMM performance, I went unconventional (lots of classical and art song stuff went on that night) and sang "Hurry! It's Lovely Up Here." As the only theatre song that evening, it got a great response. Then later that year in drama class, one of our assignments was to perform a 15-minute scene from a play. I chose the opening scene from On a Clear Day You Can See Forever and, foretelling by some forty-plus years what Michael Mayer and Peter Parnell would attempt to do, changed Daisy Gamble to David Gamble, but also changed Dr. Mark Bruckner to Dr. Melinda Bruckner. Part of that scene gave me yet another opportunity to perform, this time to a taped accompaniment, "Hurry! It's Lovely Up Here." And last, but not least, jump ahead to 1980-81 to Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, and that year's entertainment for the National Word Processing Association's conference. Working with the same people, more or less, that I'd worked with the previous year in New York for that year's conference, the hour-long show was a story about word-processing and romance in the work place (I think) and somehow or another, the second number in the show had me singing, yep, you guessed it, "Hurry! It's Lovely Up Here." (Haven't a clue what this had to do with anything in the story, but it was a big hit with the happily drinking audience.) And, yes, it's still a favorite of mine.

And that's the end of the series on my Top Ten Theatrical Train Wrecks. Coming up in future posts...more Alphabet Soup, more Musical Mayhem, and more Walking in a West End Wonderland. Cheers!

© 2015 Jeffrey Geddes