Word: finian
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GILBERT A. FISHMAN: Quincy House Committee, social co-chairman; Harvard Student Calendar; House athletics; Quincy Drama Society; Finian's Rainbow, production staff; Quincy House Arts Festival; Leverett House Arts Festival; Italian Club...
...passage of time has faded Finian's Rainbow. Its fantasy minces, its humor stumbles, its message plods. Its plot--which genially ignores internal consistency throughout--soon divests itself of every shred of plausibility and rushes headlong into a happy ending...
...even with a more responsive audience, problems will remain. George Rosen is always droll as Finian, a dotty old Irishman who has stolen a crock of leprechaun gold and buried it near Fort Knox, an area he believes conducive to spontaneous generations. Carolyn Firth, his ready, nubile, and willing daughter, is a pretty girl and a charming actress. But neither of them seems quite at home in a brogue; Rosen at times simply deserts Belfast for Brooklyn. And Miss Firth, for all the attractiveness of her voice, shares with many of the other singers a tendency toward inaudibility...
Randy Lindel, as the colleen's Missituckian beau, and Peter Houghteling, as the bigoted legislator, Billboard Rawkins, were adequate but little more. William Hodes, as Og, the rightful owner of Finian's gold, displayed a physique as unelvishly robust as his singing voice (he spoke in a coy falsetto). Other members of the cast, however, were more successful...
Besides Miss Firth and Rosen, I liked Richard Cooke, as a henchman of the demagogic Southern senator who wants to dispossess the poor but tolerant folk in whose valley Finian has sunk his funds; Pat Wynn, as the hero's graceful kid sister who, being mute, dances to communicate (don't worry, she'll learn to say "I . . . love . . . you" before the curtain; and Steve Presser, in the small role of a cigar-chawin', bulge-bellied minion...