Add Category
ON A CLEAR DAY YOU CAN SEE FOREVER
Reginald Theatre, Seymour Centre
March 21
Until April 15
Reviewed by JOYCE MORGAN
★★★½
This odd-ball musical about the paranormal, past lives and errant hearts has had several reincarnations since its Broadway debut in 1965.
It’s best known for the 1970 film with Barbra Streisand as ditzy Daisy, a patient who falls for her shrink.
On A Clear Day could now be dubbed On A Queer Day, since the pivotal role in this latest reworking has changed gender and sexuality. Patient Daisy is now David, a young gay New Yorker.
Flower power: The show always had a plot so foggy you need a session on a shrink’s couch to unpick it. Credit:David Hooley
David has a little problem. It’s not his paranormal ability to hear the phone ring before it does, make flowers grow or find missing keys that prompt him to see a shrink.
Loading
David needs to appear “normal” to his boring fiancé’s new bosses. But normal, as shrink and hypnotist Dr Mark Bruckner tells him, keeps changing. And Mark will soon find that out for himself.
Under hypnosis, David regresses to a past life. Out of his psyche pops wealthy, self-possessed Roaring Twenties-era Melinda.
What unfolds is not so much a love triangle as a rectangle: boring boyfriend Warren loves David; but David falls for Mark. Meanwhile, oh-so-straight Mark falls for the ghostly Melinda. Or maybe for David. Or both.