By Harry Haun
30 Oct 2009

A showstopper-in-perpetual-motion, Fitzgerald is one of three major replacements the musical show made from Encores! to Broadway — and he's ideally cast as that libidinous leprechaun. "Sometimes, it's a little scary when it seems like it's so right on the nose," confessed The Wizard of Og. "You're, like, 'Oh, God, what's the expectation going to be?' But it was really fun to just get in and work on it like a normal role. Mostly, I didn't want him to be a Lucky Charms clichι leprechaun. He starts out here like an Irish soccer punk — like an adolescent at a turning point."

The role won David Wayne the first Tony ever awarded for Featured Actor in a Musical, and it quite conceivably could put Fitzgerald in the same category where he was last seen as Igor, the goon with the movable hump, in Young Frankenstein.

"I have lots of one-name roles: Og, Igor, Boq [Wicked]," he said whimsically.

With impish abandon, Fitzgerald zips merrily through the show as if motorized. "I have five scenes, and I love them all. It's a really clear, fun story to play. I get to do scenes with Jim, Kate, Chuck and Alina [Faye, who's Susan the Silent]. One after the other, they're all marvelous.

"The role is not exhausting. It's exhausting to have a six-month-old baby and a two-year-old at home — and then do this every night. That's exhausting."

James Stovall, who plays the preacher on the premises, admitted his favorite moment was when he forms a quartet of gospeleers for an often-overlooked song in the second act called "The Begat," arguably, the show's secret showstopper.

"It is!" he agreed. "You don't expect it so it really does hit you. And you know what? Every show, we've had that response. People go crazy. I think that Cab Calloway and Avon Long and all the great black performers that have made our entertainment industry what it is today — we give credence to that in that number."

The humbling skin-color switcheroo that Senator Rawkins is put through — heretofore accomplished, rather uncomfortably, with blackface — is now done with two different actors, here better cast than they were at Encores! with closer physical types: David Schramm into Chuck Cooper and back again.

Cooper credited this neat match-up with "some wonderful casting people who know their business. They put it together we were similar types. That's how it happened."

Playing the arc within, growing from a redneck racist to an empathetic human being through this black-like-me experience, is a task Cooper said he had taken to heart. "I like that I get to play a person who, all of a sudden, gets it — that the world is round, that we're all on this spaceship together and that this ridiculous racism craziness thing is stupid. And I just love that all this was written in the '40s, and here we are today doing it because we're at a time where — finally! — we can talk about race."

Otherwise, "I like it that I get to stand on the stage all by myself and sing," which he does solidly with a sonic reprise of "That Great Come-and-Get-It Day." "I like that." As Buzz Collins, the bigoted cracker who is constantly stirring a crock of political incorrectness, William Youmans indulges in a lot of emphatic fingerpointing. "I stole that from John Malkovich in True West," he boasted proudly, backing that up with a blast of white-heat Malkovich: "Remember 'No, we are passing down from the mountaintop'? I steal everything. Everything."

Conductor Rob Berman, who is also credited with music supervision and vocal arrangement, seemed properly blissed out at the party. "I love conducting this show more than I can remember anything. The music is so beautiful, every song. There's so much nuance and color. And what an audience to have for our opening."

Lead producer David Richenthal, who (with Encores! honcho Jack Viertel and eight other producers) brought Finian's Rainbow from City Center two blocks west to Broadway, roamed the party like a conquering hero to the contented hum of rave reviews that had infiltrated into the festivities, quickening the pace considerably. You sensed the temperatures going up in every room.

"I've always loved this show," Richenthal admitted. "I don't why people have stayed away from it — well, I do know, but they're wrong — and I think this production puts those reservations to bed. It's relevant to today and speaks to issues we all care about, but it's a joyous show. I'm thrilled to see audiences reacting the way they do."

Designer Kenneth Cole turned out, he said, because he's "a fan of Cheyenne's." Tommy Tune, knowing his tunes, came as a die-hard fan of the score. No truth to the rumor that he played Og in summer stock — making him the lankiest leprechaun in recorded history — "but," he added, "Burton Lane saw me one night at the Carlyle and said, 'I've got a great idea. Let's revive Finian's and you play Og.' And I said, 'I'm a little bit big for a leprechaun.' And he said, 'They say that to Og, and he said, 'Aye, and I'm gettin' taller every day.' Burton said, 'That would get a big laugh.'"

Another lover of the score: the last previous Woody in town, Max von Essen, who did it at Irish Rep with Melissa Errico, Malcolm Gets,Jonathan Freedman and Terri White. "She was stopping the show down there, too," he reported.

Rob Fisher, who's conducting the upcoming Girl Crazy for Encores! Nov. 19-22, was waxing eloquent about how well the score had been treated: "The orchestrations [the original ones by Robert Russell Bennett and Don Walker] are gorgeous. To hear a real orchestra in a real theatre like that is something we don't have often enough. They really did honor that score."

Showing up in support of Cooper were two (at least) "Law & Order" key players — S. Epatha Merkerson and Stephanie March — the latter shockingly sans-chef-hubby Bobby Flay. "He's at the baseball game," explained March. "I said, 'Will you be my date for Finian's Rainbow? And he said 'Definitely' — then he got World Series tickets, and he said, 'See you later, sister!'"

Venerable vet Ruby Dee, who'd turned 85 two days earlier, ran the press gauntlet — well, negotiated it cautiously, cane in hand — with an enthusiasm that betrayed a vested interest: Her son, Guy Davis, has a featured harmonica spot in the show as Sunny, using the "Whopping style" of the original Sunny, Sonny Terry. Papa Ossie, Purlie Victorious himself, would have been proud.

Jefferson Mays and Doug Wright (the Tony-winning actor and Pulitzer Prize-winning author) of Richenthal's I Am My Own Wife were in attendance, as were his frequent (and now high-profile) investors, Anthony and Charlene Marshall.

Advertising kingpin and producer Jeffrey Ash arrived in his motorized wheelchair, looking spiffy as all get-out in his black tie and tux. "Alexander Cohen taught me how to dress for openings," he offered by way of an explanation.

Brian Dennehy, the last to star at the St. James (however briefly: less than a month of Desire Under the Elms but rebounding soon in more O'Neill: Hughie), was spotted at intermission, frantically searching for the men's room and finally ducking into Angus McIndoe's next door to the St. James.

Mario Cantone was still bowing for the sensational "Sit Down, You're Rockin' the Boat" he put over at the Actors Fund's Frank Loesser tribute four nights before. "I've only done one musical, and that was Assassins, and I didn't dance or really sing in it." He's certainly open to doing more musicals. "As long as I don't have to work with puppets, I'm good."

"Together Again!," as it were, were Debra Monk and Edward Hibbert, proving there is life after Curtains. They played producer and director, respectively, in that tuneful little backstage romp.

During his "Mad Men" hiatus, Bryan Batt said he's writing a book that will be coming out in May. With apologies to Father Flanagan, it's called "She Ain't Heavy, She's My Mother."

There was a late-arrival influx of stars dropping by from their own shows — among them, Bye Bye Birdie's John Stamos and Fela! diva Lillias White and Saycon Sengbloh. The latter has the distinction of being the first black actress to play the green Elphaba inWicked.

Also making the scene: Alison Pill and Abigail Breslin (just announced for the Broadway revival of The Miracle Worker), Rachel Dratch, eternal glamorpuss Arlene Dahl and husband Marc Rosen, Crystal Hunt and Brett Clawyell of "One Life To Live," Jerry Dixon, director Trevor Nunn (checking out the Best Musical Revival competition — he's helming the incoming A Little Night Music), Judith Blazer, directors Susan Stroman and Mark Lamos, Tony winner Ben Vereen, Fox-5 weatherman Mike Woods, Tony Planta and Chris Diamantopoulos from "Ugly Betty," Brenda Braxton David Hasselhoff and, marking his first Jujamcyn opening in which the Playbill title page lists him as Jujamcyn president, Jordan Roth.

Beverly Camhe, whose first job in New York was as Yip Harburg's personal assistant, knew somebody up there liked what they saw. "The Yipper is cheering."