Mercury Theater finds gold at the end of ‘Finian’s Rainbow’ Bob Abelman Cleveland Jewish News, The News Herald, The Morning Journal Member, International Association of Theatre Critics “Finian’s Rainbow,” currently being performed by the Mercury Theatre Company, was well ahead of its time when it hit Broadway in 1947. A morality play cleverly camouflaged as a merry musical, E.Y. Harburg, Fred Saidy and Burton Lane’s opus offers commentary on racism and capitalism through whimsical lyrics, a deceptively conventional musical theater score, and a standard romantic comedy storyline set in a utopian locale. But the show’s satire hit awfully close to home for the precarious 1940s. By the time the film version of “Finian’s Rainbow” was released in 1968, the musical was hopelessly behind the times. For a nation divided by social, political and economic unrest, steeped in racially-charged violence, and involved in a war overseas and a drug war at home, “Finian’s Rainbow’s” beguiling characters and melodic music were as woefully out of step as its teachings about hope and acceptance. Today, newspaper headlines are all too similar to those from the 1960s and our moral compass seems to be pointing back the 1940s. And yet “Finian’s Rainbow” – at least Mercury’s absolutely charming treatment of it under Pierre-Jacques Brault’s direction – is a welcome reprieve from what ails us. For more of this review, go to www.clevelandjewishnews.com/columnists/.