Review Roundup: Irish Rep's ON A CLEAR DAY YOU CAN SEE FOREVER

Irish Repertory Theatre's On a Clear Day You Can See Forever just opened last night, June 28 The show stars Tony Award-nominee Stephen Bogardus (Bright Star), John Cudia (The Phantom of the Opera), and Tony Award-nominee Melissa Errico (Finian's Rainbow). ON A CLEAR DAY features music by Burton Lane and book and lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner.

Directed by Charlotte Moore (Finian's Rainbow), ON A CLEAR DAY plays at Irish Rep Theatre (132 West 22nd Street) on the Francis J. Greenburger Mainstage, for a run through August 12, 2018.

Daisy Gamble is a woman of extrasensory talents - she sings and flowers bloom, and she always knows where you've placed your keys - but it's her smoking habit that leads her to Dr. Mark Bruckner, a psychiatrist who will attempt to hypnotize her addiction away. In Daisy, Dr. Bruckner discovers the case - and perhaps the love - of his life as he unlocks Daisy's past self, an 18th century British aristocrat named Melinda Welles. Mark becomes increasingly enamored of Melinda as he watches her relive her great love affair with Edward Moncrief. All is going well until Mark decides to publish his findings, and Daisy realizes she's been unwittingly along for the ride!

Let's see what the critics had to say...

Jesse Green, New York Times: The Irish Rep production, led by Melissa Errico in the dual role of wacky Daisy Gamble and grand Melinda Wells, gives it a good go, on a very small scale. (The cast has been reduced to 11 from 47 and the orchestra to five from 31.) Songs, subplots and characters have been dumped, including Daisy's boyfriend, Walter - presumably to enhance Daisy's agency in the story. She goes to see the hypnotherapist Mark Bruckner (Stephen Bogardus) not because her smoking threatens Walter's advancement at work (as in the original) but because it threatens her own. Which might make more sense if we ever learned what Daisy does.

Frank Scheck, Hollywood Reporter: But the technical limitations somehow suit the show. Only the most curmudgeonly could resist its undeniable charm, which might easily get lost in an overblown production. Despite its estimable pedigree, On a Clear Day You Can See Forever will never have a prominent place in the musical theater canon. But much like its central character, it seems destined to be reborn in one form or another from time to time.

Raven Snook, TimeOut NY: Desperate to stop smoking in order to land a job, neurotic Daisy (Melissa Errico) asks Dr. Mark Bruckner (Stephen Bogardus) to hypnotize her out of the habit. While under his spell, she reveals herself to be the reincarnation of Melinda Welles, an alluring, sexually liberated Englishwoman who died tragically in the 1700s. Soon, the shrink has the hots for Melinda, but Daisy thinks the doctor digs her. It's a love triangle with two sides and no point, and his manipulation of her is creepy. But the songs, at least, are worthy of resurrection: In addition to the well-known title tune, the show includes Daisy's catchy plea to her plants, "Hurry, It's Lovely Up Here"; the haunting love ballads "Melinda" and "She Wasn't You"; Daisy's showstopper, "What Did I Have That I Don't Have?"; and Bruckner's 11-o'clock number, "Come Back to Me." They're all beautifully delivered by Errico, Bogardus and the small but big-voiced ensemble, whose energy and enthusiasm compensate for the barely there design and pared-down orchestrations.

Robert Hofler, The Wrap: Unfortunately, both acts of this revival get off to a sloppy start, and Moore's rewrites arguably create more problems than they solve. Not that she's gone radical, like the most recent 2011 Broadway revival of "On a Clear Day," starring Harry Connick Jr., where the telepathic Daisy Gamble was turned into the gay florist Dennis Gamble.

Tim Teeman, Daily Beast: Perhaps it is the meek staging, with electronic screens behind the actors showing splodgy, painted scenes of a 1960s New York skyline, or 18th century England. There are little rectangles that are supposed to be a New York roof. The orchestra, semi-hidden at the back of the stage, does its best to animate Burton Lane's score. But the size and conception of the production plays against it.

Elysa Gardner, New York Stage Review: Happily, Clear Day is in far better hands in the thoroughly charming new production by the Irish Repertory Theatre, adapted and helmed by artistic director Charlotte Moore. The reliably supple and attractive performers Melissa Errico and Stephen Bogardus are respectively cast as Daisy Gamble, a young woman whose insecurity betrays her unique gifts-to make the most stubborn flower seeds bloom as if by magic and to know precisely when telephones will ring, to cite two examples-and Dr. Mark Bruckner, a hypnotist she consults in hopes of giving up cigarettes, and who instead regresses her to a seeming former life as an 18-century British aristocrat named Melinda Welles.

Photo Credit: Walter McBride