Review: ‘On a Clear Day,’ Eternally Odd, Gets Yet Another Life

NEW YORK — Bizarre subjects are no deal breaker for musicals; think human meat pies and philosophical felines. But few shows have as bewildering a topic as “On a Clear Day You Can See Forever,” the 1965 jaw-dropper about ESP, telekinesis and past-life regression that’s a weird mix of laughably earnest woo-woo and chipper Broadway savvy.

For the savvy, we have the score to thank: a treasure trunk of standards with music by Burton Lane and lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner. Songs like “Hurry, It’s Lovely Up Here,” “What Did I Have That I Don’t Have?” and “Come Back to Me” are so catchy and well constructed that, stripped of context, you’d have no idea they were originally attached to such strange ideas. (In the musical, “Hurry, It’s Lovely Up Here” is sung to a flowerpot.)

For the strange ideas, Lerner has to take the blame. It was he who, obsessed with the New Age fads flitting around the era, devised a story — about a love triangle among a psychiatrist, his patient and her former incarnation — that became, over the years, Broadway’s pity project: the Golden Age book most in need of rescuing.

My conclusion, based on the 1970 Barbra Streisand movie, the 2000 Encores concert starring Kristin Chenoweth, the complete rewriting of the show as a Harry Connick Jr. vehicle in 2011 and the cute revisal that opened at the Irish Repertory Theater on Thursday, is: It can’t be fixed. The pleasures of “On a Clear Day” are so intertwined with its absurdities that no theatrical version can separate them. You have to enjoy it for what it is, or not.

The Irish Rep production, led by Melissa Errico in the dual role of wacky Daisy Gamble and grand Melinda Wells, gives it a good go, on a very small scale. (The cast has been reduced to 11 from 47 and the orchestra to five from 31.) Songs, subplots and characters have been dumped, including Daisy’s boyfriend, Walter — presumably to enhance Daisy’s agency in the story. She goes to see hypnotherapist Mark Bruckner (Stephen Bogardus) not because her smoking threatens Walter’s advancement at work (as in the original) but because it threatens her own. Which might make more sense if we ever learned what Daisy does.

But Bruckner isn’t really interested in her smoking anyway; he’s interested in her ESP and telekinetic powers. She anticipates phone calls, intuits the location of missing objects and makes flowers burst from their pots “as if the cops were after them.”

It is while fishing around in her subconscious that Bruckner discovers her previous incarnation as Melinda, the highborn daughter of an anti-slavery crusader in Georgian England. Compared to Daisy, Melinda is confident, unconventional and uninhibited; naturally, Bruckner falls in love with her. Alas, Daisy’s the one who falls in love with him.

The rules of hypnotically induced past-life regression are murky. Apparently, other characters from Daisy’s past — like Melinda’s lover, Edward (John Cudia) — can hitch rides into the present, so they get to sing flowery arias like “She Wasn’t You.” And the therapist himself can hitch rides back, which gets confusing fast. When Bruckner tries to save Melinda from drowning on a ship bound for America around 1800, the story enters a causal loop paradox that makes some people snigger and others throw up their hands. I did both.

Improbability need not be an impediment in a musical. Real cats, you may point out, don’t get reborn either. But, at least when imagined by T.S. Eliot, they do have metaphorical import for humans. It could be argued that Daisy and Melinda and Bruckner do, too, suggesting the unsuspected lives we all carry around within us. Who might we have been under different circumstances? Who might we yet be?

Well, no. “On a Clear Day” doesn’t want your helpful interpretation. It’s truly about what it says it’s about. Nor does the Irish Rep’s version, staged and adapted by Charlotte Moore, make a bid for a charitable deep read. It has about as much layering as a school pageant about American presidents.

If everything is flat-out, that doesn’t mean it’s unpleasurable. Any chance to hear Errico sing is a chance worth taking. She was a big part of the reason the Irish Rep production of “Finian’s Rainbow,” another Golden Age oddity, albeit one with an obvious Irish connection, was so delightful.

She doesn’t disappoint here, either, especially in the big numbers. And if no one is likely to approach the melancholy comic genius of Barbara Harris, the original star, Errico gets more out of Daisy than the passivity of the role might suggest. The rest of the cast also sings powerfully, suggesting something bigger than is actually there, and James Morgan’s watercolor projections likewise help compensate for the bare-bones set.

A full-scale production would be impossible today — and unwarranted. A revue featuring just the songs, lovely though they are, wouldn’t hang together: They are too strangely disparate. If a scrappy off-Broadway miniature isn’t a totally satisfying solution either, it may be the only future possible for this much-reincarnated but still beguiling show.

—

Production Notes:

‘On a Clear Day You Can See Forever’

Through Aug. 12 at the Irish Repertory Theater, Manhattan; 212-727-2737, irishrep.org. Running time: 2 hours.

Music by Burton Lane; book and lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner; adapted and directed by Charlotte Moore; music director, John Bell; choreography by Barry McNabb; sets by James Morgan; costumes by Whitney Locher; lighting by Mary Jo Dondlinger; sound by M. Florian Staab; projections by Ryan Belock; orchestrations by Josh Clayton; props by Deb Gaouette; hair by Robert-Charles Vallance; conductor, Gary Adler; production stage manager, Arthur Atkinson. Presented by Irish Repertory Theater, Charlotte Moore, artistic director, Ciarán O’Reilly, producing director.

Cast: Florrie Bagel, William Bellamy, Stephen Bogardus, Rachel Coloff, Peyton Crim, John Cudia, Melissa Errico, Caitlin Gallogly, Matt Gibson, Daisy Hobbs and Craig Waletzko.