Off-B'way Review: Show/Boat: A River

The cast of Show/Boat: A River.
Credit: Greg Kessler

In recent decades, the theatergoing public has had a love/hate relationship with Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II’s Show Boat. When Florenz Ziegfeld first produced it on Broadway in 1927, it was regarded as an epic breakthrough in musicals. Unlike the frivolous European-influenced operettas which preceded it, the score and the plot were fully integrated. Hammerstein’s book addressed issues of social consciousness, ushering in a new era of character-driven shows, with Hammerstein’s later collaboration with Richard Rodgers, Oklahoma!, leading the way. Based on Edna Ferber’s novel of show-folk traveling down the Mississippi, Show Boat addressed the controversial topic of racism and miscegenation, but only tangentially. The main story focuses on the syrupy romance between gambler Gaylord Ravenal and innocent Magnolia Hawkes, daughter of the riverboat captain. The show’s antiquated depiction of its African-American characters led to protests during Harold Prince’s 1994 Broadway revival. Audiences were still in love with the beautiful score, but had trouble swallowing the stereotypical characterizations.

David Herskovits has tackled this dichotomy head on in his re-imagined adaptation for Target Margin Theater (where he is artistic director), Show/Boat: A River, now in a short run at NYU Skirball as part of the Under the Radar Festival. The ten-member ensemble play multiple roles, sometimes switching races and genders. Kaye Voyce’s stark set features two entry ways cut into a scrim with the words “White” and “Black” crudely drawn in reverse letters. The production opens with the house lights on and the company broadly demonstrating Hammerstein’s racially charged dialogue, complete with the exaggerated gestures they would use in the “meller-dramers” the fictional company plays on the show boat stage. When they are assuming Caucasian roles, they don sashes with the work “WHITE” on them. This forces us to confront the brutal discrimination of the period (late 19th century into the 20th) and transforms the nostalgic valentine to a romantic past into an unflinching portrait of a merciless era. This approach is most effective when the secretly mixed-race but passing-for-white singer Julie (a moving Stephanie Weeks) is forced to reveal her true ethnic identity. She removes her sash and with her white husband Steve (beautifully bass-voiced Edwin Joseph) leaves the showboat by the “BLACK” exit.

Stephanie Weeks and Rebbekah
Vega-Romero in Show/Boat: A River.
Credit: Greg Kessler

Another interesting and arresting re-interpretation occurs in the second act, also involving Julie. Now reduced to an alcoholic wreck after Steve has left her, Julie is headlining a Chicago nightclub. After a stunning rendition by Weeks of Kern’s “Bill,” she discovers Magnolia (a sweet-voiced and tender Rebbekah Vega-Romero) is also destitute after Gaylord has flown the coop and desperately needs a job. In the original, Julie nobly sacrifices her own position by going on a binge, leaving her spot in the show open for Magnolia. In Herskovits’ staging, Julie hears Magnolia’s audition of “Can’t Help Lovin’ Dat Man o’ Mine,” a song identified with the black community, rips off her “W” for white button (they switch from sashes to buttons in the second act) and exits the theater in disgust. This bold staging suggests Julie recognizes the white appropriation of African-American music and quits the biz in protest. The irony is doubled near the end of the show when Weeks returns as Kim, Magnolia and Ravenal’s daughter and a star on white-dominated Broadway, and sings “Why Do I Love You,” her parents’ love song, like a 1950s rock-and-roll ballad, echoing the theme of cultural appropriation. Dan Schlosberg did the amazing orchestrations and Dionne McCalin-Freeney the intricate vocal arrangements. Both are also listed as music director. 

There are other startling moments such as the appearance of two Confederate gun-toting rubes, played for comedy in 1927 and in the 1936 movie version, but seen as racist menaces here, and a stirring arrangement of “In Dahomey,” originally a novelty number set in a racist exhibit at the Chicago World’s Fair, but in Herskovits’ version, an anthem to racial pride.

Rebbekah Vega-Romero and 
Temidayo Amay in Show/Boat: A River.
Credit: Greg Kessler

Unfortunately, these insightful sequences are combined with conventional renditions of the material and we get a mixed bag of traditional and progressive. It’s entertaining but confusing. Herskovits should have gone further in his radical re-interpretation of an established classic.

The cast does its best to balance the contrasting styles of performance. In addition to marvelous musical moments from Weeks, Vega-Romero, Joseph, and Philip Themio Stoddard as a virile, charismatic Ravenal, Alvin Crawford delivers a deeply-felt “Old Man River,” and Caitlin Nasema Cassidy amuses with a tart “Life Upon the Wicked Stage.” Temidayo Amay lends depth to several roles including the comedy-relief Frank. Steven Rattazzi is a lovable Captain Andy, Suzanne Darrell a strong Queenie, and J Moliere a sharp-tongued Parthy.

This Show/Boat offers much food for thought and many pleasing musical sequences, but fails to come together under a unifying vision.

Jan. 15—26. Target Margin Theater at NYU Skirball, 566 LaGuardia Place, NYC, as part of the Under the Radar Festival. Running time: two hours and 30 mins. including intermission. nyuskirball.org.