Playing opposite here is Matt Gibson (Woody) a fabulously talented actor I worked with in New York last spring when I did a performance of Sweet Smell of Success – he is a great singer and actor and sort of reminds of a classic era film star. She is a wonderful artist who has a way of drawing the audience in. What impresses you the most about their performances?Ĭatrin Davies (Susan) has been in many productions with me. Introduce the readers to the lead actors and who they play.

We want to make the audience feel like they are in the action too!

Musically the space is really nice (now that the hall has been renovated) – but if you are not careful it can be a little big for a show like this. I think one of the biggest challenges with doing shows like this at MD Hall is keeping the intimate feel in a 750+ seat theater. What have been some of the major challenges you have faced directing the show, and working in this space? In this new world he has fled to there is also a bit of his old world of Ireland in the form of a the Leprechaun who has come to take back his gold… This is a pretty convoluted set of circumstances to start with so we have tried to find ways of keeping things fresh and light. What was your and Director Rick Hammerly’s original vision for the show and how have you designers helped to bring that vision to life?įrom the outset we have been focused on telling the story of Finian and his antics as he deals with a new world where he has come to hide a crock of gold he has stolen from a Leprechaun. This version was created by the Irish Repertory Theatre and really strips away all of the excess so that what we are left with is great music, a wickedly funny script and a great story to tell. The version we are doing is leaner than the big Broadway version many people may be used to. What does the show have to say to today’s audiences and how will they relate to it? At its heart this show really uses the score to tell the story. All of these musical influences are used to tell the story from different perspectives that range from the African-American workers in the fields to the Irish cast just arrived here to the bigoted Senator and his cronies. Blues and R&B influences go hand in had with lush musical theater ballads and light show tunes. The score is interesting because it covers a lot of musical ground. How would you describe the score of Finian’s Rainbow? So in a way this show has been with me most of my life and I thought it was time for me to do it! Then a couple of years ago Bernard Dotson (who was in the Broadway revival in 2009) and I were talking about shows we would like to do and again “Finian’s Rainbow” came up. I did a concert with MET Opera star Mignon Dunn and I asked her one day if she wanted to sing anything else on the program we were doing and she said “yes! Look to the Rainbow.” When I asked about this she told me that when she was first starting out singing at the MET she would go to see “Finian’s Rainbow” because she knew someone in the cast and had fallen in love with that song. Great songs like “Old Devil Moon” and “Look to the Rainbow” have become standards. I worked on a summer theater production of Finian’s in Ohio when I was growing up and I was always captivated by the music.

Spacie ernest maryland