Word: lerner
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...takes no ESP to predict that On a Clear Day You Can See Forever will be a solid smash on Broadway, yet also predictably the show will not set off the seismographic tremors that Alan Lerner has created in the past. Mr. Lerner has chosen to collaborate with the veteran composer Burton Lane, whose brilliant score for Finian's Rainbow of 1947 greatly influenced subsequent musical. The combination of two expect giants leads one to expect the ultimate, and the attempt to floor the audience certainly becomes obvious. But the show unhappily remains more an entertainment than an experience...
...plot is an updated modification of My Fair Lady. For a flower girl Lerner substitutes a girl who grows flowers. While Doolittle went to a bachelor linguist to have her accent repaired, Daisy Gamble goes to a bachelor psychiatrist to cure her "hallucinations." Daisy suffers from extrasensory perception (ESP), which means that she answers telephones before they have a chance to ring. An imaginative situation for a musical to be sure, but so far we are still in New York City, and everyone knows an Alan Lerner show must somehow trudge back to historical England...
Sure enough, Daisy turns out to be the reincarnation of one Melinda Moncrief, the daughter of an 18th century parvenu. Soon we have flashed back to the world of manor houses and wide green lawns, and the gayness which ensues virtually welcomes Mr. Lerner back to his element. Meanwhile Mark, the dashing young shrink, falls in love with Daisy as Melinda (the girl has changed her accent, remember?). Daisy discovers that Mark has fallen for her 18th century model and runs away in tears of frustration. Mark catches her at the airport where she miraculously reintegrates the various centuries...
However, one might well wonder why Louis Jourdan was ever cast as the leading man. Alan Lerner writes for protaganists who are mild-mannered yet tough, such as Rex Harrison or Richard Burton. Jourdan never goes beyond politeness, and hence he is penalized by being left blacked out at the side of the stage like some naughty hockey player while the English revelries are taking place. While passable on the romantic numbers, his voice lacks both the power required for the showstoppers and the philosophic tone needed for others. Worst of all, his explanations of psychoanalytic theory find him more...
Novelist T. H. White first saw America through the magic casements of Camelot. To his immense surprise, Englishman White fell in love with the ruddy country-or what he saw of it between tryouts of the Lerner-Loewe musical based on his tetralogy, The Once and Future King. He vowed to return, and his opportunity came in late 1963, when he was booked for a three-month lecture tour that was to take him all over...