Greg Kessler

It’s the same old Show Boat, with the same old plot points that startled folks in 1927, some of them still startling today. How Steve and Julie avoid arrest for miscegenation, for instance—the climax of Act I—or Magnolia’s desertion by Ravenal.

The book of the musical—which has always been diffuse, not to say messy—makes the same points it always made: racism is bad, and marriage to a shiftless lout is a bad idea, too, however beautifully he sings “Make Believe.” Go see the marvelous 1936 movie if you don’t believe me—Helen Morgan sings “Can’t Help Lovin’ Dat Man,” Paul Robeson sings “Ol’ Man River,” Irene Dunne sashays in blackface, what more do you want?

Many scenes and songs are omitted at the Skirball because the show still runs two and a half hours (with brief pause), and the complete piece is downright Wagnerian. The couple beside me said, “Thank God!” when Cap’n Andy spoke the word, “Intermission,” and departed posthaste, but they were unusual in so doing. I was having a marvelous time. I remembered all the songs, and so do you, and some of the singers were wonderful.

There was one number new to me, and a shock—“Dahomey,” when the white characters visit an “African” village exhibit at the Chicago World’s Fair, all drums and chants, they feel unwelcome and flee—and the Black characters are glad to see them go. That number has never been in any Show Boat film.

A cast of ten do multiple duty, as is usual these days when reviving crowded old shows, and we know when an actor is playing a white person because, in Act I, they wear a sash saying “WHITE” and in Act II, a button with “W.” When they don’t wear a sash or a button, we know the same actors are Black. If men are playing women, they wear feather boas; if women are playing men, they wear hats denoting rank, such as Sheriff. All this is clever and very easy to grasp—we do not waste our time trying to figure out who or what any actor is playing, as is often the case with race- or gender-neutral casting. The orchestra of half a dozen is versatile and expert, and when a character tells them to shut up with their underscoring, why, down they shut.

So: It’s the Deep South but Julie, the prima donna, is passing for white on a show boat on the river. Magnolia doesn’t know that, but then she doesn’t care when she finds out. Julie and Magnolia are friends despite their class and racial differences, but race—and class—and propriety—separate them. And when Julie sacrifices herself for her long-lost friend, Magnolia never does find out about it—only we do. We never do find out what happens to Julie—death in the gutter, we may assume. (I’ve never read the original Edna Ferber novel.) At Skirball, Kim Ravenal (Magnolia’s daughter) is played by the same actress, Stephanie Weeks, who previously played Julie, and she finally gets to jazz up an old tune. By then it’s modern times (or anyway the 1930s) and no one wears racial signifiers anymore.

Not a lyric has been bowdlerized—I checked them against the Complete Lyrics of Oscar Hammerstein—but a certain word has been omitted, often replaced by “N-word.” The original would be shocking, and shock is reasonable in a play that challenges racial attitudes, but Target Margin seems to think “N-word” will make the point sufficiently. There are also several occasions when a singer speaks a lyric before singing it, just to make sure we hear every original word clearly—an excellent touch in so political a show. But this does not foreground what was already front and center.

Greg Kessler

Show Boat was revolutionary for 1927 and it’s not revolutionary now because the songs and dialogue are so familiar and sentimental (“Why Do I Love You?,” “Just My Bill,” et al.) The plot meanders like the river it’s played on and, especially in Act II, goes on too long. There was a lot of cutting in all the movies made from it (and closeups to make points you can’t make in a stage play), and that made for a tighter if somewhat confusing show. It’s confusing no matter what you do. We are used to a neater story, where knots get properly tied, and Show Boat is never neat. Neither was the racial situation in the South after the Civil War, honey, or heartbreak, or show biz or anything else being shown to us.

Oscar Hammerstein II was looking for a way to make the musical seem like a serious art form, and with Show Boat, he found it: kill somebody. Julie does not actually die before our eyes, but she disappears, alone, heartbroken and drunk, and we can guess the rest even if Magnolia does not. Later would come—or go—Jud Fry, Billy Bigelow, Lieutenant Cable and the King of Siam. Sweeney Todd and Hamilton are Oscar’s grandchildren.

The cast are all adept at switching parts; some of them are also good singers and nobody dances much. An “Apache Dance” (the French kind, pronounced a-pash) is announced at the Chicago Fair, but whatever that couple are doing, it is not an a-pash dance, which would be perhaps too brutal and misogynist for today’s sensibilities. (There’s a good one on YouTube, with Buster Keaton in drag.) The distinctive and easily changed costumes are by Dina El-Aziz, the stripped-down orchestrations by Dan Schlossberg, the unobtrusive set by Kaye Voice, the music direction by Dionne McClain-Freeney, and the direction of the whole credited to company leader David Herskovits.

Greg Kessler

Steven Rattazzi is cheerful, voluble, henpecked Captain Andy, and when a cast member flees the stage (perhaps shot), he has a wonderful time describing—and acting—the play we should have seen. Philip Themlo Stoddard looks like a leading man and sings like one, dulcet and persuasive, even when ducking his high notes. Alvin Crawford is the proper size and build and his basso close approximation of the proper voice for Joe and “Ol’ Man River.” Edwin Joseph is another leading man but has a blond wig to play scalawag Steve and a darker one for the dancing child star of Hollywood. (All the actors double and redouble their parts, and all take chorus roles when available.) Temidayo Amay is Frank the comedian.

Stephanie Weeks falls apart in her reprise of “Can’t Help Lovin’ Dat Man,” but the director does not clearly explain why she pulls out of the Club Trocadero on New Year’s Eve to give Magnolia her chance. Perhaps Julie’s noble sacrifice seemed just too much of a Black-people-don’t-get-happy-endings, they-get-martyrdoms trope. Anyway, we were glad to see her drop her dainty nineteenth-century frock and come back by the end as a jazz diva.

Rebbekah Vega-Romero works the girlish Magnolia, the innocent with generous instincts, but her singing is on the shrill side. Suzanne Darrell and J Molière share the indomitable Parthy, Andy’s wife and Magnolia’s mother, the sledgehammer with a heart of gold. Caitlin Nasema Cassidy undertakes many confidante duties but she does get to deplore “Life upon the Wicked Stage” while racing all over it.

I wasn’t sure which of these ladies—or gents—or non-binaries—was playing the cruel sheriff, and it might have been more than one of them, but good show whoever it was. I was too engrossed in the plot and impressed by the threat to ask myself the question. Like the vast, paddle-wheeling Cotton Blossom, a few curtains and a cast hurling themselves into the ancient story dazzled my attempt to focus on reality. And that’s theater, isn’t it?