FINIAN’S RAINBOW, Marriott Theatre in Lincolnshire. Too seldom revived, this whimsical 1947 musical deftly interweaves the colorful denizens of “Rainbow Valley, Missitucky”: a racist senator, a leprechaun who falls for a mortal, an Irish immigrant hoping to find a rainbow at the end of a stolen pot of gold, and an integrated chorus of tobacco farmers. An amalgam of Li’l Abner and A Midsummer Night’s Dream, this sturdy confection by E.Y. Harburg, Burton Lane, and Fred Saidy is less dated than one might expect. Its most controversial incident–the leprechaun changing the Dixie bigot into a mellow African-American singer–now seems more poetic justice than vaudevillian stereotyping, and it’s a perfect excuse for the splendiferous “Begat” quartet. Delirious with wordplay, Finian’s Rainbow abounds in sly populist satire, notably the hypocrisy-puncturing “When the Idle Poor Become the Idle Rich.”
