Hey there, pandemic-deprived theater lovers. Let’s hear two cheers for the San Francisco Opera, where the folks in charge are streaming their acclaimed 2014 Show Boat revival. The blessed SFO deciders are making the grand gesture in a week when the Tony nominees for the cut-short 2019-2020 season include three best musicals competitors—Moulin Rouge, Jagged Little Pill, Tina—of the jukebox musical variety.
At a time like this, it’s exhilarating to be reminded that original scores were once the gems of American theatre annals, and that the seminal Jerome Kern-Oscar Hammerstein II score for Show Boat was one of the most magnificent, if not the most magnificent. It adorned a production demonstrating inarguably that musical comedy could retain the comic elements but could also include recognition of a more realistic world than had previously been the norm.
So two rousing cheers for this Show Boat—with an understanding that the traditional third cheer is being withheld. The blame can be placed with director Francesca Zambello, who doesn’t seem to have noticed that the realism embedded in Show Boat, adapted from Edna Ferber’s 1926 novel of the same name, is inextricable from it. Instead she has approached the classic differently for the 21st century, perhaps because she reckoned (wrongly) that the shocks the musical provided in 1927 no longer apply.
As a result, she’s sent out Show Boat as a melodrama. Maybe her rationale has to do with the opening sequences, which take place in 1877, the period of beloved melodrama. The story, however, of Magnolia Hawks (Heidi Stober), daughter to steamboat Cotton Blossom proprietors Cap’n Andy (Bill Irwin) and Parthy Ann (Harriet Harris), and her star-crossed marriage to compulsive gambler Gaylord Ravenal (Michael Todd Simpson), only loses power when reduced to a curses-foiled-again level.
Indeed, during a plot containing somber references to miscegenation, racism, alcoholism and the above-mentioned compulsive gambling, the Cotton Blossom hokey presentations include melodrama spoofs. When they crop up in Zambello’s take, they look hardly more spoof-like than just about everything that goes on around them. Oh, and Zambello does Kern-Hammerstein no favors by amending the final moments where third-generation Kim Ravenal has become a star in her own right. Here, she just becomes a pallid adolescent.
There is an abiding plus, of course: the knock-your-1927-socks-off score, conducted with smart regard for Kern’s tempos by John DeMain and sung with honorable beauty by a cast including Patricia Racette as mixed-blood Julie La Verne, Morris Robinson as steamboat hand Joe, Angela Renée Simpson as all-purpose chef Queenie, Kristen Wyatt as Ellie, and John Bolton as Frank, the latter two as Cotton Blossom second bananas.
So yes, the songs—so many of them standards (if not heard as much 90 years on)—is sung with beauty but not always acted with depth. Stober and Michael Todd Simpson warble “You Are Love” and “Why Do I Love You?” with proper care for ballads aimed at the ages. Robinson does wonders with “Ol’ Man River.” On the other hand, Wyatt and Bolton push too hard at the comedy numbers. Their rowdiness could have something to do with choreographer Michele Lynch’s requirements.
Racette’s “Bill” is immaculate as intoned but lacking the heart-breaking emotion imbued in it. Stober’s “After the Ball” (that hot 1892 Charles K. Harris chart topper, rendered when Magnolia makes her starry singing debut at Chicago’s Trocadero) might have clicked more resoundingly had Zambello and Lynch not adulterated it with so much New Year’s Eve boisterousness. Not so incidentally, whenever the chorus sings out, they’re unintelligible.
Then there’s the just plain acting, although it’s not just plain. Zambello has all hands on Cotton Blossom deck shouting and histrionics-izing to beat the band. They come close to beating it to a standstill. There is a chief culprit: the unflagging Irwin. Apparently hired to spread his shtick on thickly, he studiously complies. He turns Cap’n Andy into a grimacing, loose-limbed dervish. Next to him, Harris as a ceaselessly haranguing Parthy Ann almost seems subdued—almost.
Approving words go out to costume designer Paul Tazewell, set designer Peter J. Davison, lighting designer Mark McCullough, and sound designer Todd Nixon for doing their best to fill San Francisco’s huge War Memorial with the right color and flair.
A few more words on the indelible Kern-Hammerstein score, which has often been tinkered with over the decades. As a matter of fact, Kern died in 1945 just a few weeks after composing a new addition to the often altered song list. Zambello has included some of the lesser known numbers, less known for being relative throwaways. She might, on the other hand, have included two stunners written for the 1936 film version—“I Have the Room Above Her,” sung by a Magnolia-smitten Gaylord, and “Ah Still Suits Me,” sung by Joe in a lighter mood. The items were worthy add-ons then and remain that way.
As for “Ol’ Man River”: In my opinion, the impassioned prayer, written for a baritone or bass voice, remains the greatest song ever written for an American musical. Will it always be pertinent? That’s mighty likely. In the day of the Black Lives Matter movement, it resonates piercingly with talk of the “white boss.” No matter how Show Boat is treated, the song—like the river—jes’ keeps rollin’ along.
Reviewer’s parting trivia note: According to a source close to Florenz Ziegfeld, who produced Show Boat, the iconic theater man didn’t like “Ol’ Man River” and leaned on Hammerstein to eliminate it. Luckily, he didn’t prevail.
Show Boat, a filmed version of the 2014 San Francisco Opera production, was streamed October 16. Information and streaming: broadwayhd.com
