The show has “rainbow” in its title and takes place in Rainbow Valley. And yet, it’s mostly about two colors that aren’t in a rainbow.

Black and white.

The 19 producers of Finian’s Rainbow were smart to spring for an extra salary. They could have just had David Schramm, expertly playing the bigoted Senator Billboard Rawkins, get blackfaced when he’s turned black after Sharon McLonergan’s offhand wish comes true. That’s what happened respectively to actors Robert Pitkin and Sorrell Booke on the two previous occasions when Finian’s visited Broadway (in 1947 and 1960) – and probably most every other actor who’s ever played Rawkins.

(That brings up that famous tale that just has to be apocryphal, right? During one production in a summer stock tent, Rawkins was to walk up the aisle, get spray-painted black, and return back – except, as the story goes, just before he took that walk, a theatergoer on the aisle got up to go the men’s room. The spray-painters mistook him for Rawkins, and let him have it. Can’t be true, right?)

Having Schramm give way to black actor Chuck Cooper is an inspired notion. Eliminating the blackface keeps the nay-sayers from using that as Exhibit-A that the show is racist. That couldn’t be more erroneous. What other show from its era has lines that can match “I think it’s just ridiculous making such a fuss about a person’s color,” “All we have to do is broaden out that narrow mind a little (and) reduce some of that bigotry,” and “She gave you a new outside when she should have given you a new inside.”

Maybe that extra salary and the cost of an extra Rawkins costume explains the scenery. Did the producers find a high school that had just finished doing Finian’s Rainbow, took a few flats off their hands, and U-Hauled them to 44th Street? Seems so. But the St. James famously has a shallow stage, so at least the action is pushed nice and forward where we can all see it.

And hear it. Does any musical announce as much that its songs are actually being sung? There are lines such as, “Oh, that cheap Irish music.” “Let’s go into a bit of Irish dance.” “It makes me want to dance and sing.” “I’m weary of minstrels who are always singing.” And “The Begat” makes no pretense of being anything but a performance number.

But if you had music of this quality, wouldn’t you brag about it, too? It was Burton Lane’s finest achievement of the six musicals he wrote for Broadway. It’s so good that “Old Devil Moon” should definitely not have been dropped from the overture.

Meanwhile, E.Y. Harburg’s lyrics are among Broadway’s best. Sure, there are songs in the entire Broadway canon that can match his wordplay in “When I’m Not Near the Girl I Love,” but I can’t think of many. I always love when a lyricist finds three rhymes that don’t remotely have the same spelling; Harburg did it with “tennis,” “Venice,” and “menace.” Perfect rhymes all.

Some may say, “Hey, if you’re such a stickler for perfect rhymes, what about ‘skeer’ with ‘year,’ ‘fickle’ with ‘partickle,’ ‘hell’ with ‘collaterell,’ and all the rest?” But those ARE perfect rhymes. What Skeer, partickle and collaterell aren’t are genuine words -- but they’re certainly perfect rhymes. This type of whimsy makes me smile; false rhymes and false accents make me wince.

And what is more lovely than the sentiment expressed at the end of “That Great ‘Come-and-Get It’ Today”? Harburg believes that if the economic and mercantile system changed so that the poor could get their hands on money, they would want “to keep it,” yes, but also “share it.” I’d like to think so, too.

Wish there were more of the score, though. Finian’s is unusually stingy with its songs, offering eight in the first act and only three new ones in the second. Scattered among them are four reprises. Sure, the policy in those days was to let people hear your best songs once again so that they’d come to love them and buy them when the singles were issued. But I’d have love to hear new songs in the reprise-spots.

I have to wonder if Lane and Harburg ever thought about musicalizing a speech that Finian has early in the show about “The McLonergan Theory of Economics,” when he’s telling his daughter Sharon about the wonders of America. He says, “Gold radiates a powerful influence on America. It fertilizes the oranges in Florida, activates the assembly line in Detroit, causes skyscrapers to sprout from the gutters in New York, and produces bumper crop of millionaires.” Now that’s a song!

Harburg and Fred Saidy’s book is full of nice in-jokes. In this age where we don’t have much cigarette advertising, how many caught the one about “Lucky Gold” cigarettes? It’s an amalgam of two brands wildly popular when Finian’s originally debuted: Lucky Strike and Old Gold. To those who think Finian’s is racist? Be more concerned about its promoting tobacco.

The show’s economic message resonates in these troubled times. Case-in-point: “Americans are the best ill-housed and the best ill-clad in the world.” Of course, it’s a joke – but the best comedy has truth in it. Where else can a woman who’s been sleeping in the park suddenly find herself in a Broadway hit, as Terri White has famously done through this production? Perhaps only in America.

White’s marvelous. As Woody, Cheyenne Jackson looks quite natural with a guitar over his shoulder. Kate Baldwin’s Sharon really grows in “Old Devil Moon,” from a woman who isn’t in love during her first A-section but is by the coda. Christopher Fitzgerald as leprechaun Og is fun, but he does lose the punch of a line that Tommy Steele got the most of in the infamous film version. When Finian says to Og, “You can’t be a leprechaun. You’re too tall,” Fitzgerald merely says, “And I’m getting taller.” Steele got flustered and frustrated, and moaned the line, almost as if he felt he was a disgrace to leprechauns everywhere. Much funnier.

But of all the cast members, I partickle-y enjoyed Jim Norton as Finian. All right, his singing voice isn’t so much; even in these days when everyone’s recording an album, we’ll never get a CD out of Norton. (Luckily, we just got a honey of an album from his castmate Baldwin on PS Classics, who does songs by Lane and/or Harburg, including two winners from Darling of the Day, Clear Day, and even one from Flahooley.)

What Norton does have, though, is a natural musical sense. Notice that on the button of each of two songs, he has perfect timing in the way he puts down his carpetbag that contains the pot of gold. (That pot, however, should be established as heavier than it is; no one has struggles a whit when picking it up. Warren Carlyle should have noticed this, though he’s otherwise done a good job of directing.)

All in all, I experienced my own rainbow when I saw Finian’s. I cherished the golden score and the silvery voices. I was happy that the producers weren’t yellow and faced the black-white business head on. And finally, I’ll be blue – no, red with anger -- if theatergoers don’t respond to this revival. Here’s hoping that there’ll be a lot of green in Finian’s Rainbow’s fuchsia.

You may e-mail Peter at pfilichia@aol.com