And Kriakos, the Aristotle Onassis stand-in who funds Bruckner’s research, is gone entirely, costing us a song (“When I’m Being Born Again”) and some of Lerner’s better lines (“Did you see his yacht in the harbor last night? I thought it was Newark”). This does the plot major damage, weakening the conflict and throwing his character-defining number, “Wait Till We’re Sixty-Five,” to the chorus, which has no business singing it. Melinda’s stuffy fiancé, Warren (Matt Gibson), is now just a platonic friend with a few lines. Two significant characters, however, are missing, and so are three significant songs. Once again Daisy (Melissa Errico) is just an unambitious New Jersey miss who seeks help from Bruckner (Stephen Bogardus) to quit smoking and inadvertently reveals a past life as Melinda Welles, a bewitching Londoner who loved portrait painter Edward Moncrief (John Cudia) and died young in a shipwreck. She has solved a problem or two and created others. Now, in another go by Irish Repertory Theatre, director-rewriter Charlotte Moore has returned in many respects to the original but made further revisions. Director Michael Mayer performed a sex change on it for a radically rewritten 2011 revival, turning Daisy into David Gamble, further muddling the narrative and making Harry Connick Jr. Lerner kept reworking it as it toured and did so again for the 1970 film version that starred a miscast Barbra Streisand and an unintelligible Yves Montand. Praised in 1965 for a remarkably witty, lush score but castigated for a confused book, On a Clear Day keeps reappearing in altered forms.
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