Broadway Star Joined: 6/14/22
What a sad state to reduce characters to sashes and buttons.
I saw this the other night. I went in expecting an experimental, pointed commentary on Show Boat based on the show blurb, the title change, and the NYT article. Instead, this was just a poorly executed, badly conceived, confusingly directed, ultimately straightforward production of Show Boat.
Now before anyone cries anti-racism (too late, eye roll), the “white” sashes/buttons are mainly used for the audience to keep track which characters are white. Yes, the white actors also wear them. There’s so much doubling in the small cast that it’s just so confusing. The messy doubling was way more offensive than any commentary on race. Parthy is played by two actors simultaneously and side-by-side, and one of these actors also plays Queenie. It seems like everyone, including Magnolia, plays Windy at some point, which wouldn’t matter if he weren’t constantly referenced and also pivotal in the miscegenation scene. The only character the white sashes/buttons work for is obviously Julie. The sashes themselves were so ill-fitting and kept falling off the actors’ shoulders.
I know Show Boat pretty well. Very little was rewritten, so it’s confusing why the director is given an adaptation credit (hardly the first director to make their own cuts and edits to this show). There are two new songs (one replaces “After the Ball,” and I’m wondering if that isn’t in public domain due to it being written by other writers). The other is the song sung by the Black actors, but they are all facing inward toward each other and it literally starts with the Lioness Chant from The Lion King. If it’s meant to celebrate Black joy, it alienated the audience by not including them, but maybe that’s the point.
I guess I was just super bummed and disappointed by this. I happen to like Show Boat. It has a glorious score and the authors were so progressive and pushed the envelope with audience comfortability regarding the race theme. Yes, some things are outdated, after all the show is about 100 years old. There are shows not five years old that haven’t aged well. Show Boat has great bones, but this bare-bones production doesn’t show it or even make any coherent commentary on it.
CurtainsUpat8 said: "If colorblind casting works so well... can I do an all white cast of a August Wilson play?"
If you live long enough that the play becomes public domain (very unlikely) or get permission from the Wilson estate (even less likely), you can. Of course you'd also need to find interested actors and audiences, which is another thing that's pretty unlikely.
"The author is the KING of any production."
Not once the copyright expires.
"After the Ball" is definitely public domain since it was written in the 1890s.
Kad said: ""After the Ball" is definitely public domain since it was written in the 1890s."
Lol duh. Anyway, the new song uses the same chord structure as “After the Ball,” so I don’t see the need to have written basically just a new melody and lyric with the same function as the original. An unnecessary addition.
HeyMrMusic said: "There are two new songs (one replaces “After the Ball,” and I’m wondering if that isn’t in public domain due to it being written by other writers). The other is the song sung by the Black actors, but they are all facing inward toward each other and it literally starts with the Lioness Chant fromThe Lion King. If it’s meant to celebrate Black joy, it alienated the audience by not including them, but maybe that’s the point."
Thanks for this detailed review--I remain fascinated to hear about this production.
I am pretty sure that second number is In Dahomey, which as mentioned earlier, apparently now starts with actual Zulu lyrics (which kinda ruins Hammerstein's ironic point of the song, but as discussed earlier, that point has been very hard to carry off and I don't know of any modern productions that have used the song since the 1946 revival and long running tour--which is too bad, as I love it musically.) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-M5-fafnA4
Edit: that's from the magnificent complete McGlinn recording which has one fault--the lyrics in chorus numbers are often incoherent unless you know them (to be fair, I suspect this was partly true of the original 1927 performances too). You can hear the lyrics a bit better in the only other recording I know of the song, the JAY recording of the complete revised 1946 version https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-M5-fafnA4
Here are the credits for the new songs:
Come Back to Me music and lyrics by Dionne McClain-Freeney, additional lyrics by David Herskovits
Dumisa trad. And new composition by Dionne McClain-Freeney
EricMontreal22 said: "
Edit: that's from the magnificent complete McGlinn recording which has one fault--the lyrics in chorus numbers are often incoherent unless you know them (to be fair, I suspect this was partly true of the original 1927 performances too). You can hear the lyrics a bit better in the only other recording I know of the song, the JAY recording of the complete revised 1946 version https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-M5-fafnA4
"
I'm very very grateful for that recording, but it's seriously flawed by the use of opera singers whose voices are just wrong for the material, even given the connection to operetta the score unquestionably has. The tempi are also frustratingly sedate, no matter how authentic. Pick up the pace!
I think it mostly, mostly works (I would have cast Julie, certainly, with a musical theatre or cabaret star though the opera voices for Gaylord and Magnolia more or less work for me.) I do agree about some of the tempi--and for a while it seemed to create an unfortunate precedent with record labels realizing they could sell their opera stars in all kinds of more or less complete musical theatre releases with some far less suitable results.
Broadway Star Joined: 3/29/23
That was some low hanging fruit to go after. But Target Margin, as clueless as ever, supplied the opportunity for Green to use them to make his post-Biden pronouncements.
But I agree that "Show Boat" in 2025 would be more devastating by doing what it did in 1927 in showing how racism keeps the wheels turning of not just "show business" but society itself.
I would like to see Steven Rattazi as Cap'n Andy in another production.
Saw this last night and pretty much agree with the reviews. I don’t really have much to add to what they said but I did manage to stay through the whole thing, which I’m proud of myself for doing.
Broadway Legend Joined: 11/12/14
Saw this tonight and I have to agree with the pans, the direction feels like an edgy college project for someone trying to make a statement but doesn't know what the statement is yet. Stylistically, it feels like a cross between Jamie Lloyd's Sunset Boulevard and Our Class (both of which I did enjoy, to varying degrees) but in a way where it didn't really serve the show at all, with a relatively bare set, some parts that feel like we're watching a rehearsal of Show Boat, and props being used in a fairly strange way. The oft-talked about sashes really only seemed to serve a purpose to punctuate both of Julie's appearances, but then ended up dragging down the rest of the cast with it just so they could use that to prove a point.
On the bright side, I rather enjoyed performances from Alvin Crawford as Joe, Steven Rattazzi as Andy, Philip Themio Stoddard as Ravenal, and Rebbekah Vega-Romero as Magnolia. I liked the reduced orchestrations more than I would've expected and found them quite effective. So at least musically there was something to enjoy. I haven't seen a production that uses In Dahomey but I thought what they did with it here was fairly effective in getting a point across. I also don't really know why they replaced After the Ball with music that almost sounds the same, I guess the new lyrics give it an ever so slightly feminist tinge?
One of the main sets in the first act is a white backdrop with two doorways, one labeled "black" and one labeled "white", but the text is backwards for the audience, so I suppose it's a commentary on how the original Show Boat separated the white and black choruses, but that feels a bit too much like inside baseball for people who aren't as familiar with the show. I agree with the people that say the show is trying to have it both ways where it's still performing the show while also trying to make meta-commentary on the show and it simply doesn't work. At least when Daniel Fish did Oklahoma, you still got a production of the show. But this was just hard to follow (I heard people talking about needing to look up the plot afterwards), and the book scenes lacked vitality, especially in the first act.
So many decisions made on that stage for style over substance… and actually weren’t stylish at all. Why was Parthy Ann played by two actors simultaneously? Why did all the actors abandon their pins 2/3 into act 2… but then a couple sashes come back? What exactly was the concept here? It seemed a bit like it was supposed to be a show-within-a-show but we never quite understood what the framing device was.
I’ve only ever seen the movie. By over emphasizing the race of the characters with sashes/pins you’d think this has something huge and sweeping to say about race. But it’s mostly a melodrama 42nd St / Funny Girl story (yes I know this obviously precedes both of those). This really felt like theater for theater’s sake and didn’t have anything coherent or new to say.
chrishuyen said: "I liked the reduced orchestrations more than I would've expected and found them quite effective. So at least musically there was something to enjoy."
I thought this was a pretty awful production save for a few performances (Julie, Joe, Magnolia's acting but not singing), but the highlights for me were the orchestrations and music direction. There is real musicianship and care in that department that felt at odds with the rest of the production. I heard some new colors in the score, and that's something I didn't expect from this production. (I didn't know what to expect...)
raddersons said: "So many decisions made on that stage for style over substance… and actually weren’t stylish at all. Why was Parthy Ann played by two actors simultaneously? Why did all theactors abandon their pins 2/3 into act 2… but thena couple sashes come back? What exactly was the concept here? It seemed a bit like it was supposed to be a show-within-a-show but we never quite understood what the framing device was.
I’veonly ever seen the movie. By over emphasizing the race of the characters with sashes/pinsyou’d think this has something huge and sweeping to say about race. But it’s mostly a melodrama 42nd St / Funny Girl story (yes I know this obviously precedes both of those). This really felt like theater for theater’ssake and didn’t have anything coherent or new to say."
To me, Show Boat does say something huge and sweeping about race. It doesn't say it in contemporary 21st century terms, but I think it's clearly saying something about our collective humanity, and recognizing/embracing/respecting Black people as being as participatory in our story ("our story" meaning both show business, and what show business sybolizes in this work, America) as white people have always been acknowledged for, that discrimiation is cruel and that erasing Black people from sight/history is unacceptable. It may not spend the majority of its running time making this point, but it seems to me it is the biggest point made, and that this message informs nearly all the crucial scenes.
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