My grandfather was a regional president for the National Operatic and Dramatic Association, so my teenage years were filled with local productions of Half a Sixpence, My Fair Lady, The King and I, Oklahoma, Show Boat and Gilbert and Sullivan, as Sam Banks cast his eye over the endeavours ("Och, that made them sook their Hawick balls" was his take on the audience's reaction to Cabaret in Hawick in the Scottish borders).
In all that time going around with him, I never saw the musical I now love best and quote continually: Finian's Rainbow. But I've seen the film – directed by Francis Ford Coppola and featuring Petula Clarke and Fred Astaire – and play the score whenever the mood takes me back to the piano.
Finian McLonergan and his daughter Sharon have turned up in "Missitucky", where Finian intends to bury the pot of gold he has managed to hoodwink from a leprechaun called Og. His favoured site is Rainbow valley, because he believes its proximity to Fort Knox will multiply the gold. Rainbow valley is a poor and divided community, especially as the local senator, Billboard Rawkins, is stirring up racial hatred and an African-American botanist is trying to grow mentholated tobacco. No one ever said musicals had to be realistic, but they can be relevant.
When Susan hides the pot of gold, it grants wishes no one would have expected. So, Senator Hawkins becomes black, and gets to take part in a fabulous barbershop quartet The Begat: "The Lord made Adam / The Lord made Eve / He made them both a little bit naive / They lived as free as the summer breeze / Without no panties and without chemise / Until they stumbled on the apple trees".
Og starts to become human, especially with his song that every teenager should know by heart: When I'm Not Near the Girl I Love: "Always my feets pursues 'em / Always I can't refuse 'em / Long as they got a bosom / I woos 'em". Perhaps my favourite number in the whole show is the love song Something Sort of Grandish with the lines: "My heart feels so sugar candish, my head feels so ginger beer".
But the Byron-esque lyrics belie a deeper, more intricate piece, where issues of racism, poverty, chauvinism and immigration are dealt with subtly and slyly. There is something quintessentially American about it, despite the stage Oirishry: even the opening number has the exhortation to "follow the fellow who follows his dreams".
I will never see the production on stage I most want to see, where my grandfather played Hawkins and his friend George McCombie was Og. For an amateur show in Kelso they managed the special effects pretty well by all accounts. Grandpa often reminisced about the show: it would have been great to see him in his prime.
More Musicals we love
• Howard Sherman on A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum
• Miriam Gillinson on West Side Story
• Kit Buchan on Guys and Dolls
