Per Riedel...
http://www.nypost.com/p/entertainment/theater/clear_day_gets_harry_9263bFk2f3ZroquAWIE0LK
I feel like Connick could find a better project, but I'd see him in any musical he does. He was great in the "The Pajama Game."
Updated On: 1/21/11 at 02:01 AM
Broadway Legend Joined: 12/31/69
I can't imagine that at all.
I'm not a fan of his at all, and Montego Glover is amazing, but I couldn't picture her as Daisy/Melinda. Yet, I'm excited to see this musical on Bway!
Understudy Joined: 5/19/03
Montego Glover will not be playing Daisy. Daisy has been turned into David a gay character whose past life is a black jazz singer who will be played by Montego Glover. Saw this workshop up at Vassar College last August. Great score of course but the new gay character/story line did not work at all. I hope they are fixing the book. As far as Harry Connick Jr...well he can sing but not much of an actor at all not that it matters on Broadway...as long as he sells tickets that's all that counts unfortunately.
Broadway Legend Joined: 7/18/03
The score to Clear Day is one of my all-time favorites. There are maybe a half dozen others that I think are in the same league. The music, the lyrics and the orchestrations are so rich.
The original book is another thing entirely. I hope Parnell's new book fixes the huge problem which is that NOTHING happens in Act Two.
The leading man (which would be Connick's role) is just a device to have the leading lady steal the show. He has three dynamite songs and is just blah.
I, too, saw it at Vassar last year and was enormously disappointed. They took everything that was colorful, magical, and fun out of the show and made it utterly banal and flat. Melinda has absolutely no story, no conflict, no character. David is a flimsy gay caricature. The added songs for Melinda (since her "story" no longer has anything to do with the original) are meaningless jukebox songs.
The idea of Davy/Melinda as a man and woman could be interesting I suppose, in a facile way, but only if the psychiatrist falls in love with both of them (which he doesn't). Otherwise, it's just latent homophobia as usual.
This is a textbook example of lesser talents taking the work of their betters, flawed perhaps but interesting, and turning it into a pointless mediocrity.
Understudy Joined: 5/19/03
Could not agree with you more!
I've only seen Montego Glover in MEMPHIS and THE COLOR PURPLE, but she doesn't strike me as having the correct style to play a '20s jazz singer. She's the very definition of a modern power belter. She doesn't appear to have the subtlety or vocal restraint of, say, an Anika Noni Rose or de'Adre Aziza.
Honestly, when I read the description of that character, de'Adre Aziza was the first person I thought of.
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