Finian’s Rainbow opened on Broadway to universal critical acclaim. The consensus: featuring a brilliant cast and score and a sweet, simple staging – this production embodies everything a Broadway musical should be.
Here’s what the critics had to say, in their own words:
NEW YORK TIMES
Here is where you should head this fall to warm your soul amid the diversions of that ever-great and ever-endangered American art form, musical comedy. All the comforting pleasures of the genre — infectious song, exuberant dancing, jokes both lovably corny and unexpectedly fresh, and of course the satisfying pairing of a him and a her — are on abundant display in this thoroughly winning production, a welcome picker-upper in an uneven Broadway season. Read the full review
ASSOCIATED PRESS
That delectable bit of musical-theater blarney called “Finian’s Rainbow” has found its way back to Broadway for the first time in nearly half a century, its charms undiminished, particularly its buoyant score. Read the full review
HOLLYWOOD REPORTER
Things are great in Glocca Morra. A theatrical pot of gold awaits anyone who enters the St. James Theatre, where the magical revival of “Finian’s Rainbow” has opened. The classic musical, receiving its first Broadway revival in nearly half a century, has the kind of score, written by Burton Lane (music) and Yip Harburg (lyrics), that can still make any theatergoer swoon. Read the full review
VARIETY
What better time for a show that makes gentle mockery of that incurable habit of building the illusion of wealth on nothing more than a dream and a credit line, while also offering the rose-tinted consolation that such folly will turn out fine in the end? But it’s not so much the uncanny appropriateness of its pixified fairy tale as the enveloping warmth of Burton Lane’s melodies and the spry wit of Yip Harburg’s lyrics that make “Finian’s Rainbow” such an infectious charmer. Rather than try to get around the 1947 musical’s daffy story by hammering the social satire, director-choreographer Warren Carlyle and his winning cast simply embrace its quaint idiosyncrasies. Read the full review
WALL STREET JOURNAL
I don’t think I’ve ever seen a more musically satisfying Broadway show than “Finian’s Rainbow.” Not only is the Yip Harburg-Burton Lane score a string of flawlessly cut gems, but everyone involved with the production takes the songs seriously, performing them with love and sensitivity. Best of all is Kate Baldwin, whose memorable appearances in such regional-theater productions as Huntington Theatre Company’s 2008 revival of “She Loves Me” have made me wonder why she doesn’t work regularly on Broadway. Ms. Baldwin is the real deal, a rich-voiced soprano who can also act. The way that she and Cheyenne Jackson sing “Old Devil Moon” is the stuff best-selling cast albums are made of. Read the full review
BACK STAGE
Lightning has struck twice at the St. James Theatre. First Arthur Laurents took his perfectly fine production of “Gypsy” in the Encores! Summer Series and elevated it into a stunning work of art. Now the folks behind Encores! concert version of “Finian’s Rainbow” have taken that pleasant if problematic presentation and transformed it into a magical production that should enchant both lovers of the Golden Age musical and those who favor more-contemporary fare. Personally, I would have called such a thing impossible. But this “Finian’s Rainbow” is for everybody, and I hope it runs forever. Read the full review
THE FASTER TIMES
The new production of “Finian’s Rainbow,” which has just opened at the St. James Theater half a century after its last try at a full-bore Broadway revival, tries hard to turn a dated show with a problematic book into an extraordinary theatrical experience. It succeeds in doing so, magnificently, thanks to an unusually talented cast of comic actors, singers and dancers, and 13 songs that are either evergreen favorites or rousing revelations; not a dog among them. Read the full review
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