water cooler. electric guitar. It's an obi.
Even if you knew in advance that the Target Margin production you were attending was an experimental reboot of the great-grandfather of the American musical, “Show Boat,” three You may become disoriented by the item.
Perhaps as you take your seat at the New York University Skirball in Manhattan, you might think the water cooler suggests the Mississippi River, or perhaps an aesthetic thirst. The electric guitar, you guessed it, signals director and adapter David Herskovitz's intention to bring the 97-year-old musical back into the modern day. (The title has been changed to a more modern style, “Show/Boat: A River.'') However, the belt hanging from the microphone stand remains a mystery. It says WHITE in block capital letters.
Audiences at the premiere of “Show Boat” in late 1927 would have taken that for granted. The musical was an entirely white production, with music by Jerome Kern and lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II, based on the novel by Edna Ferber. The film was produced by Florenz Ziegfeld, a self-proclaimed admirer of (white) American girls. The character of Queenie, a riverboat cook, was originally played by a white actor with blackface.
It's also mostly about white people. The black characters appear in strong subplots and are more fully rounded than mainstream portrayals at the time, but they are still stereotypes. To make matters worse, their talk is generally submissive and intermittent.
In contrast, the main story closely follows 40 years of the extraordinary life of Magnolia, a young white girl who grew up as part of the Cotton Blossom Troupe that sailed the Mississippi River. She marries a rake named Ravenal, raises her daughter Kim single-handedly, and ultimately succeeds in singing “colored” songs to white audiences.
In today's parlance, “showboat” centers whiteness.
The reboot “Show/Boat'' aims to negate that in an honorable way. When actors who have been cast without regard to race tighten the sashes we saw at the beginning to indicate that the character they are currently playing is white, they are implicitly reversing the expected perspective. There will be. Being white here means being an exception and, in a sense, guilty. No wonder the silky obi keeps slipping off.
You might be too. To the extent that the production is successful as a progressive optic, there is a great cost to consistency and therefore pleasure. Much like the white guilt it reflects, it is far too messy to encourage meaningful reflection.
Anyone who frequents experimental theater is familiar with this process. (“Show/Boat” is part of the 2025 Under the Radar Festival.) Disruption is part of the penance. Here, dozens of characters are played by just 10 people, and Magnolia's mother is somehow played by two people, so even if you're familiar with the story, following the epic story can be a challenge. Especially difficult. Perhaps a name tag would have been more useful than a belt.
The lack of strong visual markers makes it difficult to know where you are and, in some cases, who is talking to whom, though the set by Kay Voice is by no means literal. The convent scenes between Ravenal (Philip Temio Stoddard) and Kim are usually guaranteed to bring tears to your eyes. Kim never interacts on stage in this production, so I didn't even realize it was happening.
Story logic and directorial focus are secondary in both cases. The riverboat show, hosted by Stephen Ratazzi's Captain Andy, was so intentionally poorly acted that it seemed impossible to keep the audience going. (The acting is often wooden, anyway.) And Dina El Aziz's partially deconstructed costume helps identify a type more than an individual, so I'm not sure if she's in the mix. We continued to lose Magnolia (Rebecca Vega Romero).
Even more problematic is the incompatibility between the creator's strong intentions and the more powerful raw material, which violently resists reformulation. Not that the story was entirely coherent. In shaping Faber's novel into a workable script, Hammerstein had to be selective about turning points, especially in the hectic second act. But Kahn's score is a marvel of variety, inventiveness, and emotion. With music that draws from Euro-Middle Eastern operetta, symphonic doom, folk music, jazz, vaudeville, and other genres, he confidently sketches individual characters and groups, showing the passage of time and taste.
Despite some nice vocal arrangements (by Dionne McClain-Freeney) and surprisingly rich orchestration (by Dan Schlossberg) for a band of just six players, it's hardly felt here. No. Of course, this is not the case with “white” songs, where almost everything is expressed in horror quotes, as if they are evidence of a crime. The “Black” songs are much better. “Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man” and “Bill” are highlights of Julie (Stephanie Weeks), Showboat's mixed-race star who has passed as white. Longshoreman Joe (Alvin Crawford) belts out the anthemic “Ol’ Man River.”
But even these classics clearly need restructuring. (“Show Boat” entered the public domain in 2023, so anything goes.) Electric guitars have been used to unconvincingly extend the aural timeline beyond the 1950s. Masu. Many songs are unnecessarily introduced with new forms or colloquial lyrics, with individual words tossed around like unearthed dinosaur bones.
Still, there are times when this can be effective. I appreciate that the first word you hear in “Show/Boat” is “Listen,” instead of the N-word you hear first in the original “Show Boat.” This is a wise way of recognizing the need to pay attention to history, rather than burying it. And a rewrite of the song “In Dahomey,” sung by fake African performers at the Chicago World's Fair in 1893, is a rewrite of the authentic African folk song “Dumisa,” sung sumptuously by Temidayo Amai and a small choir. interrupts the original's nauseating, bard-like performance.
Listening to this song, I wish “Show/Boat” was even further away from “Show Boat.” The same goes for Caroline Fermin's choreography, which feels fresh without the need to build an argument against the original.
This kind of argument is usually a bad bet. If your work is too offensive to perform, please don't perform it. If you want to replace it with a new piece, told from a new, perhaps more authentic perspective, do so. However, I feel that a half-hearted treatment in this case would be like leaving the bath water alone and drowning the baby. As many of the more faithful revivals have proven, you can't tell what's good about “Show Boat” from what's not. Even with the help of sashes and slashes.
Show/Boat: River
Through January 26 at NYU Skirball in Manhattan. newskilball.org. Running time: 2 hours and 30 minutes.
