Complete Casting Announced for FINIAN'S RAINBOW Revival- Page 2

#26re: Complete Casting Announced for FINIAN'S RAINBOW Revival

FINIAN'S RAINBOW has one of the greatest scores ever composed for any musical, but the Encores show was dull because as the clips show, the singers did not have a clue as to how this music should be sung. Perhaps with the longer rehearsal time allotted the cast could grow into the roles and work on interpretation which was nonexistent in the Encores staging. Especially awful was the extremely overrated Cheyenne Jackson, who sang in his usual all show and no substance fashion.

The 1968 film is not nearly as bad as it is made out to be and is eons better sung than the Encores. The screenplay, written by the authors of the Broadway book, Fred Saidy & E.Y. Harburg, is very faithful to the original, which on film made the play seem too episodic and too long. But apart from the film, the soundtrack is the greatest performance of the score ever, in my opinion. It doesn't get any better than Fred Astaire as Finian and Petula Clark is absolute perfection as Sharon. Tommy Steele, who I normally never did care much for, was excellent as Og and Don Francks blows away Jackson and any other singer as Woody. Even more important to such a melodious score as Finian's Rainbow is the fact that the singers are backed by a 65 piece orchestra with lush, gorgeous orchestrations by Ray Heindorf and unlikely to ever be surpassed choral work by Ken Darby. No Broadway pit orchestra and chorus could ever compete with this. But despite my misgivings, I hope the new production pulls together and produces a hit, mainly because we need shows like Finian's Rainbow on Broadway today to remind all of us, but especially today's new audiences, what a real musical with real songs is all about, instead of the dialogue extensions masquerading as songs we get in most musicals today.