Why has “Show Boat” been renamed “Show/Boat: A River?” The title change turns out to be typical of what’s being billed as a “daring reimagining” of the 1927 musical. Many of director David Herskovits’s choices are awkward; their purpose is often unclear; and they undermine what’s worthwhile about the production.
The cast members have glorious voices, and their renditions of Jerome Kern’s memorable score – especially “Ol’ Man River” by Broadway veteran Alvin Crawford as Joe – remind us why “Show Boat” is still being revived almost a century after its Broadway debut.
Oscar Hammerstein’s lyrics and libretto, which adapt Edna Ferber’s novel chronicling four decades in the lives of characters connected to a show boat on the Mississippi River, is viewed as a landmark achievement in musical theater, marrying story and song in an unprecedented way. Its treatment of race was considered forward-looking at the time, although, yes, some of it is undeniably dated now. This is why audiences long have tolerated – welcomed! – revisions. Herskovits, the founding artistic director of Target Margin Theater, makes one revision to the script that is unusual and intriguing — restoring the World’s Fair scene with the number “In Dahomey,” which was deleted in revivals long ago, because of its offensive depiction of Black people: In the original, supposed African natives dressed in supposed native dress and sang in a gibberish meant to represent an African language. In this production, the scene includes a gorgeously harmonious song in Zulu, with composition and arrangement by musical director Dionne McClain-Freeney. There is also a final scene that may take place in the 1950s, judging by the song that Kim (Stephanie Weeks) sings.
What’s most noticeably different about this production, though, is not in any alterations in the script, but in the staging.
There are just ten members of the cast, each playing multiple parts. (The last Broadway revival had a cast upwards of 60.) This would be confusing enough, but the acting often feels deliberately at a remove, as if the actors are portraying actors who are playing characters. They often perform at the lip of the stage at NYU Skirball, or even enter into the orchestra pit, and the half dozen band members sometimes bring their instruments onto the stage. A stagehand, or perhaps a stage manager, dressed in modern-day attire and wearing a headset, occasionally walks across the stage, sometimes to hand a page to somebody. There’s something obviously meta going on, but what, and why? The show often feels like a thesis project.
While Dina El-Aziz’s costumes for the cast are richly specific to the time and place, each of the actors wears a homemade-looking white sash with the word “White” when they are portraying a white character in Act I (and a smaller and better-made ribbon with the word “white” in Act 2.) This seems connected to Kaye Voyce’s set design, which in Act 1 is little more than a white backdrop with two entrances, each with the word “white” or “black” scrawled backwards above it, with an arrow. The idea here is obvious — to remind the audience of Jim Crow segregation during the time when the story is set. But it feels too obvious, and, like the meta acting, keeps the audience disengaged.
Frankly, by the time I left “Show/Boat: A River” after two and a half hours of this (not, as some did, at intermission) I wondered whether the production would have been better without a libretto at all, and with no staging — just a concert.
“Show/Boat: A River” is at NYU Skirball through January 26, as part of the Under the Radar festival.
