On A Clear Day First Preview- Page 12

[newintown]

Posted: 12/12/11 at 4:49pm

I disagree - Daisy is (as originally written), ultimately, an optimist, a positive character. As a rule, audiences don't fall in love with self-pitying complainers (that's how I explain the failure of Caroline or Change).

The fact that she thinks this world is a beautiful place for the flowers to come to makes her worthy of the audience's love. If she had a song about how awful the world is, the ushers would be trampled in the stampede up the aisles.

[PalJoey]

Posted: 12/12/11 at 5:20pm

I agree with newintown (and, lord knows, I never agree with newintown): One of the things that is most perfect about the original version is that Daisy is not just "kooky," but also a little magical, that she has a somewhat fantastic version of what was called in the mid-1960s "flower power."

The clever lyrics in the songs do not seem merely clever (the way some Cole Porter lyrics somtimes do). They combine with her ability to make peonies RSVP and coax buds below that "up is where to go" to create a sweet alternate reality from which Melinda could emerge.

Daisy herself is making the puns and wordplay, to be playful with the flowers, the way one uses nonsense sysllables with a baby or a dog.

It's an action that makes the audience like her--and prepares them for the hypnosis and past lives. If she can make flowers grow simply by telling them that the world is lovely, why couldn't she have a glamorous past life?

David, as written in the revisal, is simply someone who talks to flowers, blows smoke at them (ugh), and even puts out a cigarette in their soil (gross).

And that is probably the last time I will ever agree with newintown.

[Gaveston2]

Posted: 12/12/11 at 6:02pm

With all due respect to two posters I admire: newintown and paljoey, I think you're both just defending a song because it's a nice song and we are all used to it. As I've said, I love the song, but that doesn't make it dramaturgically effective.

The point isn't whether Daisy's sunny demeanor makes her likable. Frankly, I think we respond more to the performer in "Hurry" than to the character, and if a sunny disposition is all Daisy has going for her, I think she's a flake, but potato, poTAHto.

The point is that there's no play unless somebody has a problem, a need or want, or sets out to mend a "breach" in the dramatic world. THAT should be the subject of Daisy's (and David's) first number, but Daisy says exactly the opposite: everything is "sunny" and "rosy". (So why is she seeing a shrink exactly?)

We might as well all go home. Nothing to see in Daisy's world. And certainly nothing to root for.

It's possible to handle the sort of "I want" number the show needs creatively. Pajama Game has Babe aver the exact opposite of what she actually feels in "I'm Not at All in Love." (But she's "shouting", let's recall.) Lerner knew better: Eliza Doolittle wants the "Loverly" world of her imagination; Guinevere pines for "The Simple Joys of Maidenhood."

Daisy tells flowers that "on the exterior it's cheerier." Not the same thing, however charming.

(ETA I am NOT saying Daisy couldn't sing "Hurry" at some point in the show. I'm saying that its placement in the original (and apparently in the adaptation) wasn't helpful to the play as a whole.) Updated On: 12/12/11 at 06:02 PM

[PalJoey]

Posted: 12/12/11 at 6:22pm

Works for me.

[Gaveston2]

Posted: 12/12/11 at 7:02pm

Nothing like a shower to clear my dramaturgical brain: joey, Lerner should have written a different opening number for Daisy. Something along the lines of "where in the world do I belong?" She doesn't fit with Warren's corporate friends; she isn't career-driven like the students at the U. (this being the pre-Flower Power production of the show). She's a square peg in a world of round holes.

Such a song may sound like a sad or angry ballad, but it doesn't have to be (and, frankly, sad and angry aren't really true to Daisy's character). It could be self-deprecating a la Seesaw's "Nobody Does It Like Me."

Then cut "S.S. Bernard Cohn" (Can we all at least agree that however great the tune and arrangement, this is a lyric with nothing to say?) and insert "Hurry" at that point in the act. Now it retains its charm, but it also acquires subtext: Daisy finds the world "cheerier", "sunny" and "rosy" because she's been on what she wrongly assumes was a date with Mark.

This swap wouldn't solve all the problems of the original (What to do with dreary Dr. Mark?), but it might be a place to start.
Updated On: 12/12/11 at 07:02 PM

[marknyc]

Posted: 12/12/11 at 7:17pm

I don't think a "want" song is a requirement. In the original, Daisy is just a nut job who thinks her only problem is her smoking habit. Only later does she discover what she's missing - a not uncommon pattern for many narratives.

In this revisal, Mark comes out at the start and states Davey's problems quite clearly. So there's no need for a song that says what they are.

I don't miss the plants growing (absurd even if you accept the existence of ESP) nor the ESP in general. The reincarnation is quite enough fantasy for me.

[Gaveston2]

Posted: 12/12/11 at 7:48pm

mark, I'm not arguing that any musical must follow a "formula." I'm simply saying this one would have been improved with a clear and effective want song.

When your leading lady is "just a nut job who thinks her only problem is her smoking habit", you haven't got much of a show. Particularly not when she isn't going to discover her more interesting problem for two hours.

I'm glad Mark "explains" David's problems in the adaptation. But I haven't read anyone, not even the revival's defenders, who thinks the first act works. So maybe a better "explanation" would help...

[marknyc]

Posted: 12/12/11 at 8:05pm

I've encountered many books/films/shows in which the lead didn't know what s/he was missing into well into the story, so I don't think that would have made a difference here. Mark does explain Davey's problems quite clearly in the first few lines of the show.

My boyfriend is notorious for leaving shows after Act I - so when the curtain fell I turned to him and said, "Are you leaving?" He said, "No, it's fun!" I guess we just enjoyed the songs, performances and overall silliness without worrying about the plausability.

And I don't get all the complaints about the op art sets - people really are bothered by those? That's old hat to me.

[SeanMartin]

Posted: 12/12/11 at 8:20pm

>> "And I don't get all the complaints about the op art sets - people really are bothered by those?"

They're ugly as sin and tell nothing about the story. Big fail.

[Gaveston2]

Posted: 12/12/11 at 9:45pm

"I've encountered many books/films/shows in which the lead didn't know what s/he was missing into well into the story, so I don't think that would have made a difference here. Mark does explain Davey's problems quite clearly in the first few lines of the show."

Books and films are very different media, mark. But in plays, there's nothing wrong with a leading character who discovers a "real problem" behind the "apparent problem." Hell, one could say that's true of Oedipus.

But YOU'RE the one who described Daisy as a "nut job" with a trivial problem. Of course, we viewers know she's more interesting than she thinks, but the action of the play isn't her quest to discover what we know (this is where she differs from Oedipus). We just wait two hours until it's revealed to her by accident.

Pretty thin stuff, even by musical comedy standards.

[PalJoey]

Posted: 12/12/11 at 10:02pm

I saw Oedipus. It would've been a lot better if he coulda made flowers grow.

[henrikegerman]

Posted: 12/12/11 at 11:16pm

^

r.s.v.p. Creon-ies
Dear Old Sophocles
Made the Queen of Thebes
Hot as Ouzo

Hurry, it's patricidal
Up here!

Wake up,
Your fate escape
Your house was cursed
For a young boy's rape

You'll find the Boeotian Plain
A royal pain!!!

And what a....
.... gift package of
The sweetest baklava
Aegean halava
And tzatziki

Sex with the wife
Gets freaky

Before we're done!

On the Cith-ae-ron
It's so much fun!

Come poke your eyes out!
Spread yo mama's thighs out!

Careful!
Catharsis!
Ahead!

Come take at last, a
Poke at Jocasta

It's so regrettable
The gods deem our sins
Unforgettable
Hurry, Life's
Oedipal
up here!







Updated On: 12/12/11 at 11:16 PM

[newintown]

Posted: 12/13/11 at 9:12am

Agreeing with Joey puts me in the holiday spirit.

[newintown]

Posted: 12/13/11 at 9:14am

And henrik - bril.

[Gaveston2]

Posted: 12/13/11 at 4:08pm

Thank you, henrik! That was exactly what I had in mind. LOL.

[henrikegerman]

Posted: 12/13/11 at 5:38pm

Thank you, newintown, and you're welcome, Gaveston. Part of me wishes I would have gone for broke and tried to rhyme patricidal with matri-bridal.... or maybe not.

Gaveston, you know how I stand on "Hurry," having previously gone mano a mano with you, analyzing it at length in script form for you in an effort to prove its worth as a solid character piece. To my thinking, it is an "I want song," of a different color. Daisy wants to bloom herself but remains subterranean, not heeding her own call to the flowers.

Even I can not defend the number in the revival. It is a total bomb. Watching poor David Turner sing this song by himself in the shop with little set up other than Harry's "I was visited by a young homosexual who works in a flower shop," devoid not only of Mark's demanding to see how the flowers are coaxed, but occurring before Mark meets the patient, and devoide of any psychic abilities, and with Turner reduced to merely displaying potted flowers was RIDICULOUS!!!

[marknyc]

Posted: 12/13/11 at 6:09pm

Wow, henrik - you are so demanding! (I am, too, lest you mistakenly think I am one of those Bway cheerleaders who boost everything.)

I love the song (sang it in my cabaret show) and thought it worked fine in the new show. David sang it well, it established his character as a slightly ditzy gay guy who talks to plants, and it was the nice opener it was meant to be.

I always thought the growing plants were unecessary - silly (which is fine), completely unbelievable (which is fine) and in no way essential to the story. In fact, I would almost call them a distraction, since they have nothing to do with either ESP or reincarnation.

In the new show we simply get a charming song, charmingly sung. I didn't feel it needed to be any deeper than that.

[Gaveston2]

Posted: 12/13/11 at 6:18pm

henrik, "mano a mano" seems harsh for a song that I really do love (bad puns and all). It's probably my second favorite song after "What Did I Have...?" in a score I've played hundreds of times over the decades.

But you're approaching the lyric as if this were a Sondheim musical where characters have greatly limited understandings of their own, complicated motivations. I don't think a musical comedy audience in 1965 had been conditioned yet for that much complexity. (Note that although Babe insists she's "not at all in love", the chorus (and inadvertently Babe herself) tells us otherwise by the end of the song.)

So the original audience had Daisy in the present saying everything is rosy and they had Melinda in the past singing the nearly incomprehensible "Tosy and Cosh".

In a musical comedy, a confused audience quickly grows restless. They haven't signed up for a Caryl Churchill play.

[henrikegerman]

Posted: 12/14/11 at 2:42pm

Wow, I really feel misunderstood. "Where can I go to repair all this wear and this tear???""


Marknyc, how can I be that demanding, when I'm one of the few people around who actually seemed to enjoy ON A CLEAR DAY? Notwithstanding that I found HURRY to be a lowpoint and one of the most inexplicably adapted parts of the production, a missed opportunity to develop not only David's character but the dynamic between him and Mark, in a way similar to the original show.

Gaveston, my dear man, first of all "mano a mano" is just an expression conveying that we've debated this before. As I know you well know. Second, I'm not saying that the audience has to gain an explicit understanding of Daisy's inner desires, as they perhaps would if this were a Sondheim song because Sondheim might make damn sure they were there for the world to see. I'm saying that in the hands of a great artist, like Barbara Harris, they got a beautiful performance of a song that's a wonderful character study - and that it finally worked for her, and reached the audience, because her interpretation was informed by the inner workings of Daisy's psyche, including her own limitations of self-awareness. If you recall when we first discussed this, Miranda, who seemed to have the inner track on this - either from personal experience or from book learning or both - confirmed that that's exactly what happened during rehearsal.

In other words, subtext, often of psychologically subtle variety (all the more so in a show dealing with psychiatry, the metaphysical and complete personality changes over lifetimes) informs an actor. The audience doesn't have to be conditioned for a complex analysis on that level, but a sensitive audience is aware of a performer who is committed, informed, and fully briefed on what the piece he/she is performing in is about.

Someone very wise once said - and I'm paraphrasing - "While I'm watching a show I don't have to understand precisely what the character is going through, but the performer needs to know it, and if the performer doesn't, it sucks!" To take this one step further, there are things the character him or herself doesn't even understand about him or herself, but the actor needs to explore those in rehearsal and what happens should be informed by them.

To quote Sondheim "Ah but underneath...." In a Sondheim lyric the audience is made fully aware of such underpinnings. In a Lerner lyric, no. But, there is an "underneath," and, and whether it's Sondheim or Lerner, Pinter (who, unlike Sondheim also generally doesn't telegraph the "underneath" - far from it) or Simon, while the character may or may not fathom it (for all the Sondheim characters who are self-aware, even of their own limited understandings of themselves, there are others - Giorgio in "Passion" for instance - who frequently are not). But the actors and directors must. A sensitive audience may not be able to pinpoint the difference, but they will know it by the quality of the performance.

Thus when Harris allows herself to sing out loud and happy toward the end of HURRY, the actress connects with Daisy's inner need to live! This doesn't mean that Daisy herself realizes the importance of letting herself go, this is a cry of liberation, the real her striving to get out. But it means that Harris did her homework, understood the building tension, the moment when she can forget her self-consciousness in Mark's presence, and what it all means in the context of the show and what it says about the woman she is embodying. And it means that because of all of that - which the audience will most likely not be able to explain, nor should they be expected to - the members of the audience are nonetheless thrilled with the way a great actress has connected with the material. And with them.


Updated On: 12/14/11 at 02:42 PM

[Gaveston2]

Posted: 12/14/11 at 5:31pm

mark, I didn't see your post yesterday. I agree the flower growing goes nowhere, as does the key-finding, etc. I wrote many pages ago that Daisy's psychic abilities (all tossed aside in favor of reincarnation) are so many and varied, the whole is less than the sum of its parts. It's as if Lerner just threw in everything from one of the many popular books on ESP from the early 1960s.

henrik, yes, of course, I was joking in taking offense at "mano a mano". I only wanted to reiterate that I'm not hating on the song per se (despite its lyric weaknesses, which we've discussed). It seems we all like the song, which is fine but not the same thing as it being an effective introductory number.

Yes, I know exactly what you mean in your eloquent defense of performances and productions that baffle us, yet inspire us to trust that the creators and actors know what they are doing and where they are going. Barbara Harris is transcendent (pun intended) throughout the album and in all of the available clips; by all accounts she was even more appealing live. But that doesn't mean she was given a well-structured vehicle. (And I will repeat my earlier insistence that musical comedy audiences are less patient than audiences of avant garde drama. Sure, they'll overlook all sorts of plot inconsistencies; but they don't take kindly to being confused about emotional motivations.)

On a Clear Day failed both on Broadway and in the fairly faithful film, despite a monster-hit title song and (in each version respectively) a unique, talented and very popular star. Yet to suggest the show may have had problems is to invite a tidal wave of defenses! To what do we attribute its failures then?

Pardon me, but I think we have all been seduced by a couple of wonderful performances (still a John Cullum fan I), Lane's engaging tunes, and even some of Lerner's lyrics (though there seems to be less there the more I look at them). But given these virtues, it only makes sense to look to book problems. And one of the most common and destructive book problems is poor placement and focus of the songs.

Updated On: 12/14/11 at 05:31 PM