Theatre in Review: On a Clear Day You Can See Forever (St. James Theatre)

	David Turner and Drew Gehling

Talk about history repeating itself: The revival of On a Clear Day You Can See Forever -- a musical about reincarnation -- is in danger of flopping all over again. In 1965, Alan Jay Lerner had a clever idea for a show, about a psychiatrist who hypnotizes a patient named Daisy and discovers that she had a past life as Melinda, an 18th-century bombshell; he promptly falls in love with Melinda, leaving Daisy understandably confused. The idea of a triangle for two people was a fresh one, but the execution faltered, and, despite a ravishing and witty score, On a Clear Day left audiences puzzled and disappointed, running only 280 performances. This was quite a comedown for the man behind such blockbusters as My Fair Lady and Camelot.

In 2011, the director Michael Mayer conceived a new version, in which the psychiatrist, Mark, hypnotizes a gay man named Davey and discovers that he has a past life as a jazz singer named Melinda; he promptly falls in love with Melinda, leaving Davey...well, you get the idea. These improvements were not appreciated; based on the reviews, the producers will be thrilled if the production makes it to the 280-performance mark.

Many people have said many abusive things about On a Clear Day v2.0 -- Ben Brantley's description of it as less amusing than an MRI was surely uncalled for -- but in some, certainly unintended, ways, it is a fascinating and valuable experience. As an object lesson in how a book musical can go utterly and irrevocably wrong, it offers prospective writers and producers a true teachable moment.

Any way you look at it, Mayer's new concept represents a bold and creative attempt at rescuing an ailing musical. Oddly, I think that Lerner, Broadway's poet laureate of unfulfilled yearnings and impossible relationships, might appreciate its audacity. One of the best things about the new version is it eliminates the tedious 18th-century scenes and musical numbers; nobody is going to miss such sub-jewels as "Tosy and Cosh," and "Don't Tamper with My Sister." And the best of the Lerner-Burton Lane score is eminently worth preserving.

But if the entertainment at the St. James comes across as an assemblage of stray bits and pieces rather than a cohesive piece of work, there's a reason for that: Book musicals, even problematic ones, are notoriously resistant to the kind of reconstructive surgery that Mayer and his librettist, Peter Parnell, have attempted. The Daisy-to-Davey sex change has been advertised in pre-opening publicity as a masterstroke that solves the show's myriad problems; in reality, it raises a legion of new difficulties that require all sorts of contortions to explain away.

When, in the original, Mark hypnotizes Daisy and she becomes Melinda, it's an amusing demonstration of the proposition that personality is the key to romance. To Mark's eyes, the quirky, mildly irritating Daisy is transformed into an object of fascination. When Mark hypnotizes Davey, is he falling in love with a woman in a man's body? The show fudges the issue, producing Melinda in the spectacularly fetching form of Jessie Mueller, making a memorable Broadway debut. But when Mark kisses Melinda, he's really kissing Davey. Given this situation, it's truly remarkable that there isn't a single moment -- except for a throwaway line by a supporting character -- in which Mark is made to wonder if he might not be harboring maybe just one tiny suppressed homosexual impulse.

The second biggest problem is the failure to come up with a plausible character for Davey. Daisy is a variation on a standard character found in many '60s sex comedies -- the kooky girl, a bundle of tics and neuroses who is transformed by romance into a mature woman. (See Any Wednesday, The Star-Spangled Girl, etc.) In the Mayer-Parnell version, the character has been stripped of any talent for ESP, which was Lerner's way of suggesting that Daisy was more than a lovable ditz. This has the effect of making Davey strikingly colorless. And, because nobody involved wants go near the idea of Mark and Davey sharing a sexual attraction, Davey is left virtually neutered -- a choice that does little for the scenes between him and his boyfriend, Warren.

The loss of ESP as a plot element also renders two key songs meaningless. "Hurry! It's Lovely Up Here" is meant to show off one of Daisy's extrasensory powers, the ability to make flowers grow. Davey is a florist who skips about the shop singing what now seems like a random ditty about his inventory. The supremely clever and infectious eleven o'clock number, "Come Back to Me," was originally sung by Mark, communicating long-distance, via ESP, with Daisy, who has run off. Mark sings it here, accompanied by a lame, almost-an-afterthought, intimation that Davey is so suggestible than he can be hypnotized from miles away. (And why is he asking Davey to come back "in a Rolls or a van/wrapped in mink or Saran"?)

The awkward moments just keep coming. "Wait 'Til We're Sixty-Five," sung by Warren and the chorus, is supposed to demonstrate Daisy's fear of being trapped in a conventional marriage. But the new version is set in 1974 -- significantly, the year after the psychiatric profession decided homosexuality isn't a pathology -- and Warren's dream of settling down with Davey is surprisingly avant-garde for the time. It's also positively weird to hear Warren singing lyrics about pensions, health insurance, and children. When Davey returns from a date with Mark, "On the SS Bernard Cohn," the number makes no sense. We see bits of the evening, which Mark spends talking to Melinda. For this to happen, Davey must be unconscious; so how can he remember any of the details?

Other choices simply baffle. Of all the songs from the original score, I never thought anyone would retrieve "When I'm Being Born Again." A comedy number from a bizarre subplot in Lerner's script about a Greek shipping magnate who wants to plan his future lives, it's used here for an embarrassing scene in which Mark, newly spiritualized, dons love beads and instructs his students in past life therapy, thus enraging his staid Freudian colleagues. Then again, the entire story is framed as a presentation, by Mark, at a psychiatric conference; nobody involved seems concerned that this is tantamount to a public confession of malpractice.

Given the circumstances, it may not be surprising that Harry Connick, Jr., top-billed as Mark, is giving what may be the single most morose performance ever seen in a Broadway musical. The character is supposed to be a grieving widower -- but it's impossible to build an entire performance on thrown-away lines. (It's a bit of a stretch to hear Connick tossing around basic Freudian concepts, anyway.) Another much-discussed feature of the Mayer-Parnell version is that the focus has been shifted from Daisy to Mark; unfortunately, the materials assembled, which include several numbers from the film Royal Wedding -- also by Lerner and Lane -- have nothing to offer in terms of dramatizing Mark's interior journey.

David Turner, a skilled comic actor, does his best as Davey, but he's left stranded without a character to play. (And, thanks to the new plot, his big number is rendered pointless; when he sings "What did I have that I don't have," the obvious answer is, well, a vagina, for one thing.) As Melinda, Mueller is a real find, offering distinctive jazz vocals that provide a welcome jolt of energy. Her second-act number, "Every Night at Seven," is the evening's sole showstopper; watching her swing Lane's tune with startling proficiency, Connick looks like he'd give his right arm to get in on the action. Kerry O'Malley is an early frontrunner for Thankless Role of the Year, Actress Division, as the lady shrink who pines for Mark. (Then again, unlike her leading man, she can speak convincingly about concepts like "reaction formation.") Drew Gehling brings some much-needed charm and a whale of a voice to the role of Warren. As Davey's nutty BFF, Sarah Stiles works wonders with some very weak material.

Mayer's designers have excelled at shows like Spring Awakening and American Idiot, which call for a single, highly detailed unit-set approach. Like him, they are less adept at meeting the needs of a book musical, which requires the lightly stylized presentation of multiple locations. Epileptics, take note: Christine Jones' collage of psychedelic patterns -- the sort of thing we once called "op art"-- positively throbs with M. C. Escher-style visual tricks, stealing focus from the actors. (I swear that, at one point, the upstage wall was a dead ringer for a Jefferson Airplane poster that was popular in my youth.) At key moments, Kevin Adams, the lighting designer, layers swirling vortex patterns onto these dense creations, further challenging one's retinas. He does work some witty rainbow chases on the upstage cyc whenever Davey and Warren are singing about their future, however. Catherine Zuber's costumes are a mishmash of every late-'60s/early-'70s fashion fad, rendered in a Crayola palette. (Every time the chorus comes onstage, performing something that looks alarmingly like the Frug, they bear a marked resemblance to the cast of Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In, doing one of their signature party sketches.) It all adds up to an excess of style in a show that desperately needs some kind of grounding in surface reality if we are to accept its fantastic narrative. Peter Hylenski's beautifully crisp and clear sound design does full justice to the score, however.

Many will claim that On a Clear Day is just a musical and shouldn't be subjected to this kind of close analysis. But for fantasy to work, the authors must establish solid, unbreakable ground rules; otherwise, we can't relax and enjoy the fun. And a good book musical is, if anything, an exercise in solid construction. It doesn't have to be thoroughly realistic as long as it makes some kind of internal sense. These are tests On a Clear Day You Can See Forever fails to pass. If reincarnation is a real phenomenon, perhaps we can expect another version in, say, 2057; they say the third time's the charm.--David Barbour