On Stage
KANFER, STEFAN
On Stage THE BOAT THAT CHANGED BROADWAY BY STEFAN KANFER OA WINTER EVENING in 1925 Jerome Kern decided to lull himself to sleep with a new bestseller. Instead, Edna Ferber's novel kept him awake:...
...The number was discarded and for?gotten until room was found aboard Show Boat...
...One key person agreed with Kern...
...P. G. Wode-house, then in his musical comedy phase, had created the lyrics for a previous Kern show...
...But the song is endlessly repeated, whether along the river or in Chicago, overamplifying the subtext of racism in America...
...Endlessly resourceful, the Cap'n enlists his daughter and her squeeze to be the new leads...
...the couple is forced to flee, leaving the company starless...
...Nonetheless, Prince's staging con?tinually astonishes the eye and delights the ear...
...Oscar Hammerstein II, who had been in?troduced to the composer at Victor Her?bert's funeral, was best known for his con?tributions to Rudolf Friml's Canadian Mountie operetta, Rose Marie...
...Only Make Believe" sug?gests the confections of Franz Lehar and Sigmund Romberg...
...To Prince's credit, he has brought coherence to the production while adding numbers and employing cinematic techniques??dis?solves, flash-forwards ranging from 1887 to 1927, and even a closeup or two...
...Her distinctive rasp, so effective delivering risque Sondheim songs, does nothing for her one big number, "Why Do I Love You...
...But the delay did not hurt...
...McMartin has an ingratiating personality and a passable voice...
...He had already read the novel, and a single phone call persuaded him to sign on as lyricist and adapter...
...Even so, wheth?er the piece is Shakespearean or Hammersteinian, to remain vital it must be re?interpreted from time to time...
...A pity Prince found it necessary to wave his ostenta?tious banner of protest...
...Once again, Cap'n Andy (John McMartin) is at the helm of the Cotton Blossom, a floating theater plying the big river in the late 1880s...
...Suddenly the cards turn cold, and the Ravenal family bounces downhill until it finds shelter in a cheap boarding house...
...The pres?ent production at the Gershwin Theater is not only the newest rendition, it is the most ambitious in the show's 67-year his?tory...
...Pete deserts Julie, sending her into an irreversible tailspin...
...I love him," Julie is supposed to chant, "because he's??I don't know??because he's just my Bill...
...De?spite its imperfections, his restoration is a major accomplishment...
...Of all the Broadway impresa?rios, Florenz Ziegfeld seemed the least likely to produce Show Boat...
...This was the age of speakeasies and shows for the tired businessman??the sort of hits that had established Kern's reputation: Sally, about a dishwashing waitress who dances her way into the Follies and the arms of an admiring husband...
...Cur?rent wisdom along the Great White Way says that Director Harold Prince can do no wrong, a statement that can be proved false by looking at his overelaborate Kiss of the Spider Woman, or by examining some of the quirkier decisions in Show Boat...
...The production was not ready for its scheduled opening in 1926...
...As for Hammerstein's carefully car?pentered lyrics, they provide a history of the musical theater...
...She carries on until middle age, then cedes the stage to 20-year-old Kim (Tammy Amerson), who has be?come a flapper and a promising Broad?way ingenue...
...Fact is, her mother was a Negro...
...A good job may be avail?able...
...Eugene Lee's sets manage to be both immense and infinitely detailed, and Gregory Meeh's special effects are truly special and high?ly effective...
...They were not alone...
...It will be at least another genera?tion before anyone attempts a revival with this much audacity and verve...
...There are, for example, the eccen?tric dance duo of Ellie and Frank (Doro?thy Stanley and Joel Blum), and the tene?brous figure of Joe (Michel Bell), toting barges and lifting bales as he slaves along Ol' Man River...
...As Julie sinks to oblivion, the newcomer rises to head-liner status...
...We sang to each other...
...Stanley wrings ev?ery laugh out of "Life Upon the Wicked Stage," and Blum is a master at telling a joke with his feet...
...Underlining his saintly intentions, he scatters the stage with ironies...
...Show Boat has enough story for three musicals, and I have not even mentioned the subplots and the comic and tragic relief...
...the couple take a suite in the city's best hotel, the Palmer House, send their little daughter Kim (Larissa Auble) to an expensive convent school, and join the carriage trade...
...That singer is Julie, now in the final stages of alco?holism...
...Kern's glorious melodies also reflect two periods...
...Hammerstein found the adaptation difficult, however, and Kern struggled to find the right emotional tone for his score...
...The part of Cap'n Andy demands a first-class physical comedian??one reason why it attracted Charles Winnin-ger, Joe E. Brown, Donald O'Connor, and Eddie Bracken...
...We acted out scenes together and planned the actual direction...
...George Gershwin admit?ted, "I paid Kern the tribute of frank imi?tation," and Richard Rodgers spoke of his relationship to Kern in mythic terms: "The influence of the hero on such a hero worshipper is hard to calculate...
...Show Boat's intertwining narratives have always been a director's headache, and many a production has cut songs and abbreviated scenes...
...His pratfalls, though, are not pain?fully funny, just painful...
...For one thing, he sees only the good in a professional gambler named Gaylord Ravenal (Mark Jacoby...
...Theatrically, he has produced a breakthrough...
...We had fallen in love with it," Hammerstein would recall...
...Nor is this the only flaw in the monu?ment...
...I doubt that any director, with the possible exception of the late Tyrone Guthrie, could have managed a company of 71 with such fluency and grace...
...They were hungry for a spectacle with some?thing to say, and songs that were integral to the plot...
...To support herself and Kim, Magno?lia turns back to the only thing she knows: show business...
...K & H would not be deterred...
...Those numbers say more than any of Prince's pious editorials...
...No amount of pleading will help...
...Bell's elo?quent voice has a ceiling but no floor, making his the richest delivery of "Ol' Man River" since Paul Robeson's...
...Strangely, "Bill" is the one song that Hammerstein did not write...
...Instead, Edna Ferber's novel kept him awake: Long before he turned the last page, the com?poser was making plans to adapt Show Boat for the musical theater...
...Stritch has al?ways been more of a cabaret comedienne than a Broadway talent...
...Unbeknown to her old showboat friend, she quits the club to give Magno?lia a chance at the big time...
...Nevertheless, the Great Flo stepped out of character to underwrite the Kern-Hammerstein project...
...For almost two years the musi?cal earned $50,000 a week, a fortune at the time...
...THE BLACK EXPERIENCE is not han?dled with the same authority...
...The Cap'n also tries to protect his prima donna, Julie (Lonette McKee), when the sheriff comes around with bad news: Julie is not as white as she looks...
...On the con?trary, audiences had become surfeited with featherweight Broadway fare...
...For reasons that only Prince knows, McKee speaks the three words instead of singing them, denying Wodehouse's orig?inal intent...
...Your pardon I pray/'Twas too much to say...
...The remainder of the casting is far more appropriate...
...Over Parthy's opposition, he encourages the budding romance between Gaylord and Magno?lia...
...Demoralized, Gaylord abandons his wife and daughter...
...a bitterly dis?appointed Ziegfeld had to substitute the undistinguished Rio Rita as his opener...
...We had ourselves swooning...
...Julie is married to her Caucasian leading man, Pete (David Bryant), and miscegenation is a crime in Mississippi...
...Show Boat had to wait a full year to get booked into the big theater again...
...Accompanied by his shrewish wife Parthy (Elaine Stritch) and his daughter Magnolia (Rebecca Luker), he regards everyone aboard as part of his extended family...
...Still the naysayers made themselves heard: The background was too unwieldy??how could you get a full-size Mississippi paddlewheeler onstage...
...Some are useful...
...Its rhymes are inventive ("that you" and "statue"), but the song's real distinc?tion comes from its use of colloquial phrases in a sentimental ballad...
...Politically, he has pushed an open door...
...Several duets might have been translated from the Viennese: "We only pretend/You do not offend...
...McKee, who has sec?ond billing, is the hidden star of the pro?duction...
...Boat and plot carry on, but not for long...
...Florence Klotz' cos?tumes run through the decades with blithe and colorful assurance...
...This Show Boat's brilliant musical supervisor, Jeffrey Huard, has preserved the best of the old arrangements, and enhanced the rest...
...The singer in an uptown night club is rapidly disintegrating...
...For several years he enjoys a hot streak...
...Her renditions of "Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man" and "Bill" project a mel?ancholy elegance...
...Prince energizes a grand old story, without altering its essence...
...When the tour ended, Show Boat paddled off to Hollywood in 1929 for the first of three screen versions...
...Indeed, he an?nounced plans to open the musical in his freshly refurbished Ziegfeld Theater on Sixth Avenue...
...most are sententious...
...Yet the complex internal rhymes of other songs forecast the era of the Gersh-wins and Cole Porter: "Now listen sister, I love my mister man, an' I can't tell you why...
...No longer is it enough for us to hear that 01' Man River "don't plant taters and don't plant cotton/them that plants 'em is soon forgotten...
...His advisers thought he had gone bonkers...
...the characters were too complicated, the subject too controversial...
...Just before the curtain the Cotton Blossom shows up on the Natchez Levee, still pilotedby a spry Cap'n Andy...
...He had spent the previous 10 years glorifying the long-stemmed American beauty and sur?rounding her with vaudeville headliners...
...Then it went on the road, play?ing to sold-out houses all over America...
...With their extraordinary work, Kern and Hammerstein changed the direction of the American musical...
...After a slow start Luker and Jacoby prove to be solid, at?tractive singers with just enough animal magnetism to get by...
...In contrast, Show Boat featured not one but two failed mar?riages, and explored the twin themes of racial bias and economic injustice...
...Like Kern, he had been looking for something more substantial for his next project...
...and Sunny, the story of a circus performer and her trou?bles en route to the altar...
...Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man" or the rarely heard "Misery's Comin' Aroun'" affected a rising group of tunesmiths...
...Act One features a huge print of a field, complete with slaves picking cotton...
...All this assistance notwith?standing, Show Boat remains Hal Prince's show...
...But his amiable attitude quickly lands him in hot water...
...That is not to say it is flawless...
...In the twilight Gaylord Ravenal materi?alizes, whitehaired and repentant, hop?ing for a glimpse of his grown child and the wife who may find it in her heart to forgive him...
...I hope it is clear,'' declares Prince in the program, "that Show Boat's creators share the deepest solidarity with those who have been victims of racism...
...Gay lord mar?ries Magnolia and spirits her away to Chicago...
Vol. 77 • October 1994 • No. 10
