Jessie Mueller and Harry Connick, Jr. in a scene from On a Clear Day You Can See Forever
(Photo credit: Paul Kolnik)
Librettist/lyricist Alan Jay Lerner and composer Burton Lane’s first Broadway collaboration, the 1965 On a Clear Day You Can See Forever gave Barbara Harris the role of a lifetime. As Daisy Gamble, she was beset with issues of extrasensory perception, reincarnation, a green thumb, and a chain smoking habit. Daisy also turned out to have been 18th century English aristocrat Melinda Wells in a past life, giving Harris two roles in one. In addition, Lerner and Lane gave her one of the most sumptuous of all Broadway scores.
One of several Alan Jay Lerner musicals with a Pygmalion theme (here Daisy’s psychiatrist originally created by John Cullum has the job of sorting her out), the consensus was that everyone loved the score but had reservations about the book which seemed to go off on multiple tangents. The 1970 movie directed by Vincent Minnelli starring Barbra Streisand and Yves Montand with a screenplay by Lerner that retold the story yet another way, and Kristen Chenoweth had a go at Daisy in the 2000 New York City Center Encores! production.
For some years, director Michael Mayer has been working on a reconceived version of the musical with the help of playwright Peter Parnell, and songs from Lerner and Lane’s 1951 film collaboration, Royal Wedding. In Parnell’s new book, singer Harry Connick, Jr. is now the central character as Dr. Mark Bruckner, the reincarnation theme has been updated to the 1940’s, and the 18th century subplot has been entirely eliminated.
While Connick made a sensational Broadway musical theater debut in the Roundabout’s 2006 revival of The Pajama Game, he has not had any stage time in musicals since. Unfortunately, all Connick has been given to play is a psychiatrist who has been a grieving widower for five years, which is not a great deal on which to base a character, even for a veteran musical comedy star. He also seems ill at ease with Parnell’s new updated gay plotline.
Although Lerner’s original title for the musical had been I Picked a Daisy when first conceived, the Lerner estate has given permission to eliminate the Daisy Gamble heroine in favor of David Gamble (played by David Turner), a gay florist with a smoking problem and commitment issues to his non-smoking boy friend Warren Smith. When put under hypnosis to stop David’s chain smoking, he turns out to have been 1940’s big band singer Melinda Wells (sensational newcomer Jessie Mueller) in a previous life. Bruckner proceeds to fall in love with Melinda but needs his sessions with David to reach her, while David develops a crush on the hunky and heterosexual Bruckner, but dare not speak his mind. Parnell’s new plot is almost as convoluted as Lerner’s original one, while never dealing with the situation of Bruckner actually romancing a man to get to a woman.
Among other strange choices in this new On a Clear Day You Can See Forever are the garish op-art sets by Christine Jones which are distracting throughout the show. Worse still, they fail to give the 1974 era story a different look from the 1940’s big band era plot. Catherine Zuber’s costumes tend to suggest the 1960’s (the show’s original time period) with bell bottom pants and wild colors, rather than the 1974 date of the new storyline. The new 1940’s plot requires big band era songs, and the reconceived On a Clear Day has borrowed Lerner and Lane’s “Open Your Eyes,” “You’re All the World to Me,” “Ev’ry Night at Seven” and “Too Late Now” from the 1951 Royal Wedding for Melinda’s torrid vocals.
Since the sets do not convey the forties, the authentic sounding new orchestrations of these jazzed up songs is jarring along side the original songs. Having eliminated the four 18th century songs, the score has been augmented with two songs from the film version, “Love with All the Trimmings” assigned to David’s boy friend Warren (Drew Gehling), and “Go to Sleep,” a duet for David and his kooky roommate Muriel (Sarah Stiles).
While Connick’s musical training and voice quality would seem to make him perfect casting for performing Bruckner’s ballads, half of the time he sounds uncomfortable with his numbers. In the first act, he gives an unsatisfactory rendition of “She Isn’t You,” and then in act two gives a phenomenal account of “Come Back to Me.” Even the new orchestration by Doug Besterman keeps Connick’s version of the title song from being the powerhouse it ought to be.
The show’s major discovery is actress Jessie Mueller making her Broadway debut as Melinda. Whenever she is onstage something magical happens, and her big band rendition of “Ev’ry Night at Seven” is a genuine showstopper. Unfortunately, she seems to be the only one onstage who is comfortable in his or her role, though in truth, her Melinda is the show’s only fully-realized character. Turner is personable as the conflicted David Gamble, though he has chosen to make him a comic character, and he gives fine interpretations of “Hurry! It’s Lovely Up Here,” and “What Did I Have that I Don’t Have,” originally sung by a woman.
As David’s uptight, high-powered lawyer boy friend Warren, Gehling is asked simply to play a stereotype of a closeted gay man, but does well by his musical numbers, “Love with All the Trimmings” and his exciting duet with Connick, “Come Back to Me.” Stiles makes more of David’s roommate Muriel than there is on paper, turning her into a quirky liberated woman. As Bruckner’s colleague and the woman who has loved him in silence for years, Kerry O’Malley as Dr. Stein seems as uncomfortable in her underwritten role as Connick does in his.
While Meyer has not solved the show’s problems but only created new ones, his staging keeps the pace moving swiftly along, even when the audience is left scratching its collective heads. Although there isn’t a great deal of dancing, Joann M. Hunter’s choreography is most notable for the clever pas de trois to the haunting melody of “Melinda” danced by Connick, Mueller and Turner which establishes their convoluted relationship. In addition there is her lively production number for “When We’re Sixty-Five” which unaccountably includes such decidedly sixties dances as The Frug. Musical director and vocal and instrumental arranger Lawrence Yurman obtains beautiful music from the 18 piece orchestra, though he can’t help the score sounding like the songs are from two different sources.
The 2011 On a Clear Day You Can See Forever is just as troubled as the original but without that production’s star power. The musical still showcases the remarkable Lerner and Lane songs, now patched together from three sources, and offers the debut of a remarkable new discovery, Jessie Mueller. It is to be hoped that nominal star Harry Connick, Jr. grows into his role and turns up the heat the way he did in his musical debut, The Pajama Game.
On A Clear Day You Can See Forever (open run)
St. James Theatre, 246 W. 44th Street, in Manhattan
For tickets, call 212-239-6200 or http://www.telecharge.com