Show Boat revival? — Page 4

There was a period around when they did it at Lincoln Center with Vanessa Williams and Julian Ovenden and Lauren Worsham when I was obsessed with Show Boat. I saw that concert. I listened to all the available recordings. I watched the SFO pro-shot. I watched the Irene Dunne movie. It was so much that I haven't really had much desire to see it or listen to it since.

I do think it needs to be presented exactly as written as a historical piece OR hot take... as one of those dreaded revisals. It won't take to the Oklahoma treatment or even Bartlett Sher's slight twists like with The King and I or My Fair Lady. It needs to be what it is or you need to do some major work on the book. It's not magically going to be woke because of clever direction or performance choices. The issues are baked in. Get a respected playwright, definitely a woman, preferably a woman of color and let her try and find more satisfying resolutions for Julie and Ravenel and Nola. It doesn't have to match what happens in the original book.

Julie cannot just disappear. It would be great if all of the black characters could be more central to the narrative but at the very least Julie cannot just disappear to fix Nola's life. My issue is not that the material needs to be scrubbed to be less problematic but in 2020, it's not saying enough. Even though it touches on difficult issues, it feels sanitized because most of the struggle is offstage. Instead of seeing characters work through things or fail to overcome the challenges they face, everyone just keeps disappearing (Steve, Julie, Ravenel, etc.)

VintageSnarker said: "There was a period around when they did it at Lincoln Center with Vanessa Williams and Julian Ovenden and Lauren Worsham when I was obsessed with Show Boat. I saw that concert. I listened to all the available recordings. I watched the SFO pro-shot. I watched the Irene Dunne movie.It was so much that I haven't really had much desire to see it or listen to it since.

I do think it needs to be presented exactly as written as a historical piece OR hot take... as one of those dreaded revisals. It won't take to the Oklahoma treatment or even Bartlett Sher's slight twists like with The King and I or My Fair Lady. It needs to be what it is or you need to do some major work on the book. It's not magically going to be woke because of clever direction or performance choices. The issues are baked in. Get a respected playwright, definitely a woman, preferably a woman of color and let her try and findmore satisfying resolutions for Julie and Ravenel and Nola. It doesn't have to match what happens in the original book.

Julie cannot just disappear. It would be great if all of the black characters could be more central to the narrative but at the very least Julie cannot just disappear to fix Nola's life. My issue is not that the material needs to be scrubbed to be less problematic but in 2020, it's not saying enough. Even though it touches on difficult issues, it feels sanitized because most of the struggle is offstage. Instead of seeing characters work through things or fail to overcome the challenges they face, everyone just keeps disappearing (Steve, Julie, Ravenel, etc.)"

How about an adaptation of the original novel?

VintageSnarker said: "...I do think it needs to be presented exactly as written as a historical piece...."

Sweet Jesus! You should have stopped there, although there is no one, "exactly as written" version any more.

Julie doesn't disappear to conform to some stereotype of the Noble Negro--I assume that is your objection. She disappears because that is the cost of racism, more than merely losing one job on a show boat. Her appearance in Act II is there precisely to preclude us from assuming she and Frank moved north and lived happily-ever-after.

joevitus said: "...At no time in our history, I think, has it been less possible to make this show work for a contemporary audience. And that doesn't reflect well on us."

Well argued, joe. You convinced me, at least.

The Prince production took a lot of flak in Toronto for being racist. In this clip, which I watched first broadcast so many years ago, some of the cast and creatives, including James Hammerstein, son of Oscar, Rebecca Luker and Michel Bell (Joe) are asked about the criticism. They don't have much to say about it. It appears that they were completely blindsided by the protests against a show that broke so many racial barriers.

If you hang around, Rebecca and Mark Jacoby sing "Make Believe," In part two, Michel Bell sings Ol' Man River. Michel seems to have made a career out of performing the role of Joe in Show Boat productions around the country.

https://youtu.be/svJULQxx9iY?t=38

We could make believe you're twenty,

We could make believe that you're six foot two.

Part 2. Ol' Man River and Can't Help Lovin'

Updated On: 5/31/20 at 10:23 PM

GavestonPS said: "joevitus said: "...At no time in our history, I think, has it been less possible to make this show work for a contemporary audience. And that doesn't reflect well on us."

Well argued, joe. You convinced me, at least."

I value your opinion a great deal so--I blush.

Globefan said: "I propose a new film adaptation which is both VERY VERY faithful to the stage production, while also reflecting the era we're living in with BLM. A whole new take on the story."

I don't see how that is possible, but I look forward to your screenplay.

***

And re another post, yes, I have read Edna Ferber's novel. At the time (40+ years ago) I found its treatment of African-Americans largely consistent with the musical, though Julie is described much more harshly when she has fallen on hard times, more harshly than any version I've seen has ever portrayed her in Act II.

***

BlueEyes, I trust it's clear I deeply LOVE the show, but I don't see a way around some of the political problems mentioned in this thread. Maybe there should be a way to announce and produce some shows as "museum pieces", but it's hard to imagine an audience lining up for that.

Maybe we need an English director's take on the material, since that seems to appease everyone.

BlueEyes, I trust it's clear I deeply LOVE the show, but I don't see a way around some of the political problems mentioned in this thread. Maybe there should be a way to announce and produce some shows as "museum pieces", but it's hard to imagine an audience lining up for that.

I'm not getting you at all on this. The wildly popular Prince revival was 25 years ago. How much have sensibilities changed since then? Big changes 1950 to 1980, but not since then. Charles Kuralt paid homage to the musical as the lead story of a CBS Sunday Morning. The Prince production received some early criticism in Toronto but rode it out and it never emerged in New York.

A new revival would be hit by publicity-seeking people like the Reverend Al Sharpton and (I was going to add Jesse Jackson but it's been a long time since we heard from him. If he's still alive his health must be poor. Remember when Jesse was overheard referring to New York City as "Hymietown" and he got away with it. No lasting damage. Hardly an apology.) Anyway, get past the people with an agenda. Show Boat gets a perpetual "Get Out of Jail Free" card just for containing the anthem "Ol' Man River." Hire a prestigious black actor or vocalist to play Joe and sing that song. The character of Joe was not criticized when he was played by Paul Robeson. Although Paul looks very trim and neatly dressed in the 1936 film to be an ignorant laborer.

Show Boat is an entertainment. It raises certain issues of race. It does not dissect them. That would be a big turn-off for the audience.The show plays long enough.

I guarantee you that the centennial of this musical will be celebrated. Whether in a new film (not likely) or an expensive revival or at least in a prestigious concert.

I ordered the McGlinn 3 CD box set from Amazon for $12.28 and it's supposed to be here on Tuesday.

It's great to have the full score preserved, but the pacing is tepid, Frederica Von Stade's diction is odd (for years I thought she was German based on her line readings) and her performance reminds me of Pauline Kael's quip that Cyd Charisse speaks her lines as if she'd learned them phonetically,

Here is a long and informative review and discussion of this set by Stephen Holden.

Yet the making of the record has reawakened racial tensions and raised questions about the impact of musicology on a form - the Broadway show - that has only recently become subject to intensive scholarly investigation. Magnificently recorded and sung, the album features Frederica von Stade as Magnolia Hawkes, the naive and romantic daughter of a riverboat captain; Jerry Hadley as Gaylord Ravenal, her feckless gambler-husband; Teresa Stratas as Julie LaVerne, Magnolia's mulatto friend; and Bruce Hubbard as Joe, the black stevedore who sings ''Ol' Man River.''

Unquestionably the most important fragment to be reinstated is the blues chorale, ''Mis'ry's Comin' Aroun,' '' whose full statement in the new recording deepens and darkens the mood of the show, and which Mr. McGlinn believes is essential to any future production.

William Hammerstein, who controls the Hammerstein interests in ''Show Boat,'' disagrees. ''It's a wonderful, moving piece of music, but it was cut for a reason,'' he argued last week. ''When experienced, knowledgeable people cut material from a show, it's because it's not working, and they're usually right.

If the ultimate impact of this recording on future productions and recordings of ''Show Boat'' won't be known for many years, the album is certainly a landmark. Its vital, intense performances, especially Miss Stratas's Julie, along with the inclusion of all the dialogue for which Kern composed underscoring, much of it stirringly emotional, make this recording the fullest accounting of ''Show Boat'' we are likely to see any time soon.

And Mr. McGlinn's fluid pacing and his balancing of music and drama and are exemplary.

Harold Prince went for McGlinn's choice. I wonder what the final judgment of the Hammerstein son was.

https://www.nytimes.com/1988/09/25/theater/show-boat-makes-new-waves.html

I'm amused you thought you could school me in MGM history, though.

Every effort has been made to avoid any opinion that might conflict with your justifiably widespread reputation as one of the world's foremost MGM film authorities.

joevitus said: "
Hmm... I never thought the depiction of Julie was harsh. Magnolialoved her and hits or kicksParthyto escape her grasp andrun to hug Julieas Julie and Steve (if that's his name in the book)areleaving (Magnolia's, I think, about 10 in the book when this happens). The only other glimpse of Julie is when adult, married Magnolia goes into a brothel to find Ravenaland realizes suddenly, after she's left, that the maid at the door was Julie. But is that unkind to Julie or just unkind to the times she was forced to live through."

joe, I read the Ferber book a half-century ago, so if you tell me I'm wrong, I'll trust you. But I remember recoiling at the description of the alcoholic, nearly "toothless" Julie at the brothel. No production of SHOW BOAT I've seen has made Julie literally ugly and broken-down. The fact that she is a brothel maid in the novel makes her seem "less" than the cabaret singer in the show.

But as I said in another thread, I was raised in a home where all alcohol was forbidden. I had some pretty effed up ideas about drinking and drunks when I was a teenager, which is when I read the book.

GavestonPS said: "joevitus said: "
Hmm... I never thought the depiction of Julie was harsh. Magnolialoved her and hits or kicksParthyto escape her grasp andrun to hug Julieas Julie and Steve (if that's his name in the book)areleaving (Magnolia's, I think, about 10 in the book when this happens). The only other glimpse of Julie is when adult, married Magnolia goes into a brothel to find Ravenaland realizes suddenly, after she's left, that the maid at the door was Julie. But is that unkind to Julie or just unkind to the times she was forced to live through."

joe, I read the Ferber book a half-century ago, so if you tell me I'm wrong, I'll trust you. But I remember recoiling at the description of the alcoholic, nearly "toothless" Julie at the brothel. No production of SHOW BOAT I've seen has made Julie literally ugly and broken-down. The fact that she is a brothel maid in the novel makes her seem "less" than the cabaret singer in the show.

But as I said in another thread, I was raised in a home where all alcohol was forbidden. I had some pretty effed up ideas about drinking and drunks when I was a teenager, which is when I read the book."

Now I'm desperately wishing I hadn't sold my copy because I don't think that's the case, but I can't say that with any assurance. Maybe I blocked the description out of my mind? I do remember she was obviously considerably older than she had been, but then Ferber's characters age as real people do. Somehow, with Hammerstein, everyone's still alive in 1927. They just have white hair.