|
How to bring the tremendous treasures of Oscar Hammerstein II and Jerome
Kern's groundbreaking masterpiece down to manageable scale has always been a
challenge, even for Hammerstein and Kern. When they first put it up on the
stage - at Washington's National Theater to be precise - on November 15,
1927 it was November 16 by the time the curtain came down. Cut, change,
replace, cut some more. That has been the story of the history of Show Boat.
Now Eric Schaeffer and his Signature Theatre take a crack at it. They may
well have gone too far, cut too much and given what was left something of
short shrift. Oh, there are still glories aplenty - especially for those who
already know and love the show and its score and, thus, can simply sit back
and soak in the well done moments and skip over the rest. But for those who
want an introduction to one of the most influential of all American Musicals
and want to see just what it was that turned the American Musical Stage
around through its influence on the development of the art form, this
slimmed down version, crafted from a merger of the versions from the 1927
Broadway opening night, the 1946 Broadway revival and a 2005 revision by Nic
Muni for the Berne Opera, leaves too many glories unexplored and too few
highlights reached. This may be more a shortfall in the performance
than in
the new revision, but without performances of the quality Signature
audiences have come to expect, how can they fully sample the meat of the
feast?
|
|
Storyline: In 1887 Mississippi, Captain Andy's Show Boat meets with
crisis as it is revealed that his leading lady and her husband are of mixed
race ("criminal offense in this state" says the sheriff). Magnolia, the
captain's young daughter, steps in to the lead and they hire a river gambler
for her co-star. Of course, they fall in love, become the
rage of the river towns, marry and have a daughter. But when the gambler's
luck runs out he can't support them. Abandoned, the now grown Magnolia goes
back on the stage singing songs she originally learned from the former
leading lady who had to leave the boat. That lady is now a singer in Chicago, and
again, creates a "big break" for Magnolia. Ten years later,
Magnolia and her
river boat gambler are reunited on the Show Boat while their own daughter
goes on to stardom.
Hammerstein and Kern created Show Boat
for impresario Florenz Ziegfeld, a showman who thrived on oversized
entertainments. He wanted the biggest spectacle possible to inaugurate his
new Ziegfeld Theatre in New York. He wanted more than spectacle, however. He
wanted theatrical heft - an impressively worthy, weighty but thoroughly
entertaining piece. They based their show on the novel by Edna Ferber. Its
story may have had the traditional elements of melodrama that could support
big operettas of the day (Hammerstein, after all, had major operetta
successes with Rudolf Friml on Rose-Marie and Sigmund Romberg on
The Desert Song) but it also presented opportunities for the other
elements they wanted to include. With a show boat setting, it gave them the
chance to blend in the elements of the lighter
musicals of the day. (Kern had been the composer of the small-scale shows at
the Princess Theatre such as Leave It To Jane and Oh, Lady! Lady!
that shook up musical theater in the late teens.) With its treatment of
racism as well as marital difficulties, it offered the chance to bring in touches of the heavy grand drama that was the nearly exclusive
territory of non-musical shows of the day. What is more, they saw it as an
opportunity to make strides in the integration of story and song which they
believed to be the future of musical theater. This, of course, became even
more pronounced with Hammerstein's works with Richard Rodgers -
Oklahoma!, Carousel, South Pacific and the others. Show Boat was
a giant early step in the evolution of what we think of today as modern
mature musical theater.
To be more than a museum
exhibition of the landmark 1927 piece, however, requires both more heft in
the script than Schaeffer and his company kept in and more attention to the
polish of the performances. It may not be too surprising that one of the
first things to go in this effort to bring the show down to size for a small
but highly professional theater was the massive production numbers (which in
the original, approached the tableau vivant presentations for which Ziegfeld
was known). The chorus here, composed of triple threat singing dancing
actors, gives sketches of big routines. They do so with spirit but there
aren't very many of them and Karma Camp's choreography doesn't really find a way to
compensate. The cast of twenty-four includes Terry Burrell who kicks up her
heals nicely on "Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man" and draws out a fine sob for
"Bill." The lovers at the core of the story are Stephanie Waters and Will
Gartshore. Waters handles the reprise of "Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man" very
well while Gartshore doesn't seem to hit his powerful best until his last
big moment in the second act when he belts out a reprise of "You Are Love."
Prior to that he seems short of breath, especially in the dialogue scenes. A
chipper Delores King Williams and operatic-voiced VaShawn McIlwain are the
show boat's black maid and handyman. She intones "Mis'ry Comin' Aroun'" with
true feeling while he delivers all three of the recurring instances where "Ol'
Man River" underlines the messages of the drama. Best of the bunch is Harry
A. Winter who gives the most satisfying performance as Captain Andy that
I've seen - including those of John McMartin or Joe E. Brown. Kimberly
Schraf does a nice job as his shrewish wife.
James Kronzer devised an
attractive and effective set that is flexible enough to represent the many
locations of this two-decade spanning story from the Mississippi levy and
the show boat itself to the Trocadero nightclub in Chicago. Its show boat stage slides into position
smoothly. Mark Lanks' lighting design
adds depth to the area and helps change the locales but there are times when
darkness obscures some action (as with some of the vocal solos from a
balcony-level platform stage right) and unaccountably he has the spotlights
tight from the waist up on Sandy Bainum and Bobby Smith when they are doing
some fancy footwork and tap dancing. New orchestrations of the score have
been written by Jonathan Tunick using fourteen musicians. Tunick has been
able to make an orchestra of this mid-size sound much richer on other
projects. Here, under Jon Kalbfleisch's direction, it sounds thin and harsh.
At least it did on press night when the orchestra's performance
itself was as imprecise as I've ever heard a Kalbfleisch-led ensemble sound.
Music by Jerome Kern. Book and
Lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II. Based on the novel by Edna Ferber. Directed
by Eric Schaeffer. Choreographed by Karma Camp. Music direction by John
Kalbfleisch. Orchestrations by Jonathan Tunick. Deisgn: James Kronzer (set)
Kathleen Geldard (costumes) Mark Lanks (lights) Matt Rowe (sound) Chris
Mueller (photography) Kerry Epstein (stage manager). Cast: Sandy Bainum,
Mardee bBennett, Rachel Boyd or Anna Grace Nowalk, Yolanda Denise Bryant,
Terry Burrell, Matt Conner, Susan Derry, Will Gartshore, Helen Hedman, Sam
Ludwig, Sean Maurice Lynch, Kevin McAllister, VaShawn McIlwain, Jim Newman,
Aaron Reeder, Kimberly Schraf, J. Fred Shiffman, Chris Sizemore, Bobby
Smith, Stephanie Waters, Tiffany Wharton, Delores King Williams, Hannah
Willman, Harry A. Winter.
|
