Tag: Clear Day

We were sitting in the corner of the theater, on the first day of rehearsal for the current revival of Alan Jay Lerner and Burton Lane’s 1965 musical “On a Clear Day You Can See Forever,” now playing at the Irish Repertory Theater. “The misogyny in his immediately deciding he loves her,” my colleague continued, “and then she lets him — that’s where it’s problematic.” I was beginning work on the part of Daisy Gamble, and the young actress, playing a supporting role, was repulsed at what she saw as the play’s gender stereotyping. Of course, I have spent most of my life exploring classic musical theater roles for women, which often turn out to be, when you inspect them, well, problematic and, yes, misogynistic. Immersed in the part, I came to see the musical as a love song to a woman and her work. In therapy, the doctor discovers that without knowing it herself, Daisy had a past life, a complex and interesting existence as Melinda, an 18th-century Englishwoman. It’s also crucial to Act II that Daisy knows almost nothing about Melinda. The problem with Guinevere is that the audience is always ready to turn on her because she is sleeping with Arthur’s knight, Lancelot. To play Eliza in our own 1994 production on Broadway, the late director Howard Davies cast me with the understanding that I would be young, but hardly delicate. Not The Victim She Seems In the second act, Daisy sings “What Did I Have That I Don’t Have?,” one of the best torch songs Lane ever wrote. Daisy even refers to herself that way in the song’s bridge: “I’m just a victim of time / Obsolete in my prime / Out of date and outclassed / By my past.” It seems to be a song about not being loved for who you are.