VIDEO: San Francisco's New Conservatory Theatre Brings Intimacy Back To Revised ON A CLEAR DAY YOU CAN SEE FOREVER

ON A CLEAR DAY YOU CAN SEE FOREVER has been called the musical about ESP that Alan Jay Lerner wrote while he was on LSD. Indeed, the bookwriter/lyricist of MY FAIR LADY, CAMELOT, BRIGADOON and PAINT YOUR WAGON was receiving "miracle tissue regenerator" injections from the popular celebrity physician known as "Dr. Feelgood" when he was writing his 1965 Broadway entry.

It was his first stage musical since longtime composer partner Frederick Loewe retired and he was now working with Burton Lane, the composer of FINIAN'S RAINBOW, who had previously written songs with him for the 1951 film "Royal Wedding."

The plot had Barbara Harris as a scatterbrained college student, Daisy, with a talent for hearing phones before they ring and helping flowers grow by talking to them. She goes to a professor named Mark, played by John Cullum, to be hypnotized into quitting smoking. When he puts her under she starts speaking to him as an elegant English woman, Melinda, from a past life hundreds of years ago. Mark isn't sure if he's made a fantastic discovery or if a trick is being played on him, but he invites Daisy to keep seeing him for regular sessions. While Daisy starts falling in love with Mark, Mark is falling in love with Melinda.

The musical's title song became a popular standard and Barbra Streisand starred in a 1970 film version, but the show's eight-month run was a disappointment.

In 2011, a heavily revised revival of ON A CLEAR DAY YOU CAN SEE FOREVER, originally planned for Off-Broadway's Vineyard Theatre, opened on Broadway in a production directed by Michael Mayer that starred Harry Connick, Jr. Daisy was switch to being a gay man named David, played by David Turner, and when he's hypnotized, his new identity as Melinda, played by current WAITRESS star Jessie Mueller, was a 1940s swing vocalist. That version closed in seven weeks.

But that new version is the one currently previewing at San Francisco's New Conservatory Theatre Center, running May 21st through June 12th, because artistic director Ed Decker, who saw it on Broadway, felt there was unrealized potential.

'There's a beautiful story in here that connects to our LGBTQIA mission very nicely," he tells the San Francisco Chronicle.

Decker contacted Liza Lerner, the daughter of Alan Jay Lerner and lead producer of the revival and learned that she and Mayer shared his vision of an intimate production, which it would have been if it opened at the 132-seat Vineyard.

Visit nctcsf.org, click here for the full article and watch the video preview below.