Show Boat Centennial
Show Boat Centennial
Show Boat Centennial#1
Posted: 3/13/26 at 1:28pm
Next year is the centennial of this groundbreaking musical with book and lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein and music by Jerome Kern. Show Boat was the first musical to deal with downbeat topics: miscegenation, alcoholism, gambling addiction. It was the first musical to have the songs and dances integrated into the plot. And it was first to have the principal characters and the chorus racially integrated. The song “Ol’ Man River,” written for Paul Robeson whose performance is saved in the 1930s film, for decades was anointed as Broadway’s best song. Nancy Sinatra recalls the night when father Frank brought tears to the eyes of Martin Luther King when he sang it at a Carnegie Hall fundraiser.
The last Broadway production was the renowned 1994 Harold Prince show that brought us the late Rebecca Luker in the Tony-nominated role of Magnolia. Thirty years is a long time between productions, although a revival is not for the faint-hearted. Casting the many principal actors is difficult, and so many new songs were written for subsequent stage and film productions that hard choices must be made on which songs to exclude. Most of the second act is open for new creative interpretation as long as Gaylord deserts his wife due to his gambling debts and Julie some years later in an accidental meeting directs him back to Magnolia for a reunion of undetermined length.
Although bypassing a full production of a show so seminal to the creation of the modern musical seems criminal, I’m not optimistic.
Show Boat Centennial#2
Posted: 3/13/26 at 1:42pm
Word on the street for a while has been this will be at Lincoln Center next year.
Show Boat Centennial#3
Posted: 3/13/26 at 2:37pm
Directed by who? Hopefully Bart instead of Lear. I absolutely love this score.
Show Boat Centennial#4
Posted: 3/13/26 at 3:01pm
It won’t happen, but I would love to see Lonette McKee come out of retirement to play Julie again. Her performance of Can’t Help Lovin’ Dat Man is one of my all time favorites.
Show Boat Centennial#5
Posted: 3/13/26 at 3:37pm
Joyce 9 said: "Directed by who? Hopefully Bart instead of Lear. I absolutely love this score."
Directed by Bart.
Broadway Legend Joined: 9/20/18
Show Boat Centennial#6
Posted: 3/13/26 at 5:05pm
LCT is looking like LIVENT in the 90s!
What a missed opportunity to not have a Black director for this show…
Show Boat Centennial#7
Posted: 3/13/26 at 5:22pm
ErmengardeStopSniveling said: "What a missed opportunity to not have a Black director for this show…"
Why this show in particular? Why not any and all shows? The longer people keep thinking of everything racially, the longer those same people will keep trying to “stamp out racism”.
And the dog keeps chasing its tail.
Show Boat Centennial#8
Posted: 3/13/26 at 5:31pm
Are we still pushing wokeness? Literally everyone has gone in the opposite direction. The casting of 1776 at Paper Mill is going for a more naturalistic approach, all founding fathers being played by white men. At the end of the day, none of this matters. A good director is a good director, a good actor is a good actor. Sharing characteristics with the character doesn’t necessarily give you any more insight on them than someone who doesn’t have those similarities. And Show Boat is written by whites, are you dismissing the show because of this? Are we going to dismiss Shakespeare because he was writing about Italians?
Broadway Legend Joined: 11/14/13
Show Boat Centennial#9
Posted: 3/13/26 at 7:16pm
Oh sweet Jesus this is a one hundred year old musical. Please do not derail this thread with one hundred year old rhetoric.
Show Boat Centennial#10
Posted: 3/13/26 at 7:34pm
lol society has done a loop. DEI is out, very last ten years, TALENT is back in.
Updated On: 3/13/26 at 07:34 PMShow Boat Centennial#11
Posted: 3/13/26 at 7:46pm
raddersons said: "Oh sweet Jesus this is a one hundred year old musical. Please do not derail this thread with one hundredyear old rhetoric."
But someone above is practically calling for a certain color of director based on the color of a portion of the cast. How old is THAT mentality? Will it be a black director for the black actors, and a white director for the white actors?
Show Boat Centennial#12
Posted: 3/13/26 at 8:02pm
Less the color of the cast ad more the nature of the story if I had to guess.
Swing Joined: 5/8/23
Show Boat Centennial#13
Posted: 3/13/26 at 10:03pm
Ensemble17591322022 said: "raddersons said: "Oh sweet Jesus this is a one hundred year old musical. Please do not derail this thread with one hundredyear old rhetoric."
But someone above is practically calling for a certain color of director based on the color of a portion of the cast. How old is THAT mentality? Will it be a black director for the black actors, and a white director for the white actors?"
Thank god you and all your personalities are here to ruin yet ANOTHER thread with inane babbling.
Show Boat Centennial#14
Posted: 3/13/26 at 10:23pm
denou_32 said: "Ensemble17591322022 said: "raddersons said: "Oh sweet Jesus this is a one hundred year old musical. Please do not derail this thread with one hundredyear old rhetoric."
But someone above is practically calling for a certain color of director based on the color of a portion of the cast. How old is THAT mentality? Will it be a black director for the black actors, and a white director for the white actors?"
Thank god you and all your personalities are here to ruin yet ANOTHER thread with inane babbling."
You realize there’s more than one person on the planet who thinks in ways contrary to your own, right?
Show Boat Centennial#15
Posted: 3/13/26 at 10:31pm
This thread went off the rails by post 7. Amazing, great job.
Show Boat Centennial#16
Posted: 3/13/26 at 10:41pm
Joyce 9 said: "lol society has done a loop. DEI is out, very last tenyears, TALENT is back in."
I'm sure you're making this argument in good faith, account that was made two days ago.
Show Boat Centennial#17
Posted: 3/13/26 at 10:56pm
Kad said: "This thread went off the rails by post 7. Amazing, great job."
I mean I did see this amazing experimental production Show Boat: A River at NYU Skirball as part of the UTR Festival
Show Boat Centennial#18
Posted: 3/14/26 at 2:00am
Broadway Star Joined: 5/6/16
Show Boat Centennial#19
Posted: 3/14/26 at 1:44pm
Unfortunately to quote tim chalam, if they couldn't do a proper anniversary celebration for rent, no one will care about this. But putting the films in theaters again would be nice
Show Boat Centennial#20
Posted: 3/14/26 at 3:09pm
rg7759 said: "Unfortunately to quote tim chalam, if they couldn't do a proper anniversary celebration for rent, no one will care about this. But putting the films in theaters again would be nice"
One hundred years for a trailblazing musical that altered the direction of musical theatre does not seem on the same level as the 20th or 25th anniversary of Rent. I have read so many times that Oklahoma was the trailblazer. I think they always forget Show Boat. I guess the technicality is that, since Show Boat is a show business story, there are songs that have nothing to do with the main story. IMO that is a bologna argument.
Again IMO, it would be criminal not to have a 1ooth anniversary production, especially considering the fact that the last revival proved that it has held up incredibly well with the right director. And please do not bting back Lonette McKee...the role should be played by someone much younger.
Show Boat Centennial#21
Posted: 3/14/26 at 4:39pm
It would be interesting to see what Sher and LCT would do with the piece since every single production seems to be different. I’ve never seen two Show Boats use the same song stack. There’s always songs getting added, cut and shuffled around.
Show Boat Centennial#22
Posted: 3/14/26 at 5:28pm
Some of you may remember an article Concord Theatricals posted a few years ago when Show Boat went public domain, about what you could and couldn't do with the material and the song stack. It was helpful but also somewhat condescending: it ultimately boiled down to "who are you to think YOU can fix Show Boat? We already fixed it; we can't stop you from doing your own remix of the show's PD material, but we can strongly suggest you just license the revival version from us instead and save yourself the hassle."
Show Boat Centennial#23
Posted: 3/14/26 at 6:07pm
darquegk said: "Some of you may remember an article Concord Theatricals posted a few years ago when Show Boat went public domain, about what you could and couldn't do with the material and the song stack. It was helpful but also somewhat condescending: it ultimately boiled down to "who are you to think YOU can fix Show Boat? We already fixed it; we can't stop you from doing your own remix of the show's PD material, but we can strongly suggest you just license the revival version from us instead and save yourself the hassle.""
Sounds like something straight from the ego of Sean Patrick Flahaven.
Show Boat Centennial#24
Posted: 3/14/26 at 6:26pm
Based on Bart Sher’s previous LCT revivals, he likes seeing all of the material ever written on the show, and crafts his own version. I don’t think he will be licensing any existing version.
Show Boat Centennial#25
Posted: 3/14/26 at 7:40pm
In 1988 there appeared a 221-minute studio album of Jerome Kern's musical, performed by a cast headed by Karla Burns, Jerry Hadley, Bruce Hubbard, Frederica von Stade and Teresa Stratas with the Ambrosian Chorus and the London Sinfonietta under the direction of John McGlinn. It was recorded from June 1 to August 31, 1987 at Abbey Road Studios in London. It includes every song written for the musical by Kern and Hammerstein, including “It’s Getting Hotter in the North,” written for Kim’s jazzy dance finale but which has never made it onto the stage in any major production.
This recording was made using the original orchestrations of Robert Russell Bennett. Are orchestrators unsung heroes? I once read that many great overtures were essentially composed by the orchestrators given sheet music of the major songs by the composer.
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