Show/Boat: A River

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The Jerome Kern/Oscar Hammerstein II masterpiece, Show Boat, based on the novel by Edna Ferber, now almost 100 years old, holds a unique place in the American theater. The first musical to integrate book and music, it was also the first American musical to take on American racism and the Jim Crow laws of Reconstruction which were very much in evidence in 1927 when the show premiered on Broadway. While the original production used some insensitive but historical language, subsequent productions (London 1928, Broadway revivals in 1946, 1983 and 1994, West End revivals in 1971, 1998 and 2016, the Goodspeed Opera Company in 2011 and the New York Philharmonic version in 2014) have made corrections or substitutions without changing the storyline or the import of its themes, many of them made by Hammerstein himself after the opening and at singer Paul Robeson’s behest.

In has become the trend for recent revivals of famous Broadway musicals to use extensively rewritten books or interpolations by other writers as in Pal Joey, On a Clear Day You Can See Forever, Carousel, Camelot and Annie Get Your Gun, demonstrating a lack of trust in the originally successful material. One might very well ask if these shows are so objectionable today, why stage them? The revivals of The Music Man and Carousel found their heroes so anathema to modern mores that they soften them to the point that the shows made little or no sense. Others like Porgy and Bess, Oklahoma!, South Pacific, The King and I, Hello, Dolly! and Gypsy have used brilliant casting coups and theatrical choices to restore the punch of the original productions. Now that Show Boat is in public domain, founding artistic director of Target Margin Theater David Herskovits has re-envisioned it in a “bold adaptation that reframes the 1927 classic for today’s audience.”

If only he had carried through on that idea. We will never know if this staging might have worked as Herskovits has sabotaged all that is best in the original and made it both more confusing and less entertaining. Originally produced with 27 actors, Herskovits has reduced the cast to ten with so much doubling that it is difficult to know who is who. At least one character (Parthy Hawkes) is sometimes played by two actresses simultaneously which does not make for coherency. While the majority of the characters are white, Herskovits has cast it mainly with Black actors who wear sashes across their chest identifying them as white which is distracting rather than edifying. If you have not seen one of the two famed movie versions recently, it is impossible to follow the story line. Some actors switch gender as well as character or race.

While this mainly 19^th century operetta with the classic songs “Only Make Believe,” “Can’t Help Loving That Man of Mine,” “You Are Love,” “Why Do I Love You” and the iconic “Ol’ Man River,” needing big legit voices, Herskovits has cast it with actors only some of whom can sing which cheats on its magnificent score. Part of the cast simply does not have the voices to sing the difficult songs. Unaccountably for a show that has so much musical material to choose from and so many variations, Herskovits has replaced the legendary “After the Ball” for the New Year’s Eve scene, circa 1904, with music director and orchestrator Dionne McClain Feeney’s “Come Back to Me” which is no improvement. For the notorious faux African song, “In Dahomey,” Herskovits replaces it with the traditional “Dumisa,” but keeps the final verse of the Hammerstein/kern number.

As for Target Margin’s “trademark extravagant theatricality,” the production has no sets to speak of in Kaye Voyce’s design, and Dina El-Aziz’s costumes for this story which goes from 1887 – 1927 are basically contemporary clothes to which some of the actors add one item, a vest, a long skirt, a turban, etc. The result is that there is no atmosphere, time or place. The famed Cotton Blossom show boat of the entire first act is nowhere to be seen. Visually, the first act set is made up of a white scrim, (with separate doors for the white and black characters) and the second act is backed by a black backdrop, which later parts to reveal a green backing. The show opens with three symbols on stage (a water cooler, an electric guitar and a sash labeled “White”) which reduces the show to its lowest common denominator. The show has been renamed Show/Boat: A River which is not only pretentious but inaccurate as the second act takes place in Chicago.

Starting in 1887, the show begins on the Natchez wharf before Captain Andy Hawkes’ Cotton Blossom, a show boat that travels the Mississippi offering melodramatic romances. The stars of the show are the married couple Julie La Verne and Steve Baker who harbor a secret which was criminal in the South at that time. Capt. Andy’s 17-year-old daughter Magnolia known as Nola wants to be an actress but her straight-laced mother Parthy will not countenance this for a moment. However, when Julie is outed as a Black woman passing for white, she and Steve must leave the show boat in a state where their marriage is illegal as miscegenation and the Southern audience will not accept an interracial cast. Captain Andy has to fall back on Nola to play the female leads at such short notice. Gaylord Ravenal, a handsome gambler, comes looking for a job at this moment and is hired to replace Steve and play opposite Nola, over her mother’s objections. When they fall in love, they have Captain Andy’s backing to get married.

In the second act, we see how many of these relationships have turned out, in particular, Parthy and Julie’s prediction that marriage to a gambler will not go well is proved correct. After the two families, Magnolia, Ravenal, and her parents, make a trip to the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair, Ravenal’s gambling there takes a turn for the worse and he eventually runs out on Magnolia and their daughter Kim (not seen here until the final scene.) Just as Magnolia finds out she has been abandoned, Ellie and Frank, now married, turn up at her boarding house and offer to get her a job at the Trockadero Club where they are working New Year’s Eve. Unknown to them, Julie having been abandoned by Steve is now an alcoholic but holds a job at the club as the lead singer. When she hears Magnolia’s audition and learns she needs the job, she quits to make room for her. Nola is a big success which leads to a national career. Twenty years later she returns to her father’s show boat along with her now famous daughter which leads to a happy ending for several of the characters.

While the original Show Boat is often played as a romance of four couples at various ends of society, this version does not create much of a relationship between them. Steven Rattazzi is amusing as Captain Andy but the fact that he often has two wives on stage simultaneously, as both J Molière and Suzanne Darrell portray the irritable and peevish Parthy, dilutes his relationship with his controlling wife. Darrell also plays the cook Queenie, married to Joe, the stevedore (Alvin Crawford) but we don’t see them together too often. Bass Crawford probably has the best voice in the company but he is either not allowed to sing out “Ol’ Man River” or the acoustics at NYU Skirball swallow his singing. He is also asked to play Magnolia and Ravenal’s Chicago landlady Mrs. O’Brien, but this doesn’t work very well.

While Rebbekah Vega-Romero is an animated Magnolia, her inability to reach the top notes in her songs damages her relationship with Philip Themio Stoddard’s Gaylord Ravenal whose voice usually overpowers hers in their duets. On the other hand, Stoddard plays Ravenal so low key that the romantic charisma usually present in this character is missing. As the comic team of Ellie and Frank, Caitlin Nasema Cassidy and Tẹmídayọ Amay have all three of their songs deleted including “Life Upon the Wicked Stage,” probably Kern’s most famous comic song, their roles have been greatly diminished. This does suggest that they have been cast with actors who are not song and dance performers. Only Stephanie Weeks as Julie who sings a beautiful “Can’t Help Loving That Man of Mine” and “Bill.” However, in telling the story of the black Julie passing for white and the Caucasian Steve Baker (Edwin Joseph) enacted by two Black performers vitiates the audience’s understanding  – and visualizing – of the problem of miscegenation at the end of the 19^th century.

The idea of an updated, re-envisioned Show Boat is an admirable idea. However, director David Herskovits has not been true to his own intentions. If the idea was to tell the story from the Black perspective, putting “White” sashes on Black actors does not accomplish this feat. Using actors rather than singers for an operetta score plus eliminating many of the famous songs does a disservice to the Jerome Kern original. The bare visual design serves no purpose in a story which covers 40 years of tumultuous American history nor do the costumes which suggest no period help us to see the eras depicted. The doubling and switching of gender and race only makes following the plot more confusing. Like the strange new title, Show/Boat: A River fails to demonstrate the need for this version of the classic show or clarify its new intent.

Show/Boat: A River (through January 26, 2025)

Target Margin Theater

NYU Skirball, 566 LaGuardia Place, on Washington Square South, in Manhattan

For tickets, visit http://www.NYUSkirball.org

Running time: two hours and 35 minutes with one intermission