Show/Boat: A River @ NYU's Skirball Center

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The Play: Show/Boat: A River; a post-modern revisal of Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II’s 1927 musical that weaves together the love relationships and racial tensions experienced by a group of people who travel along the Mississippi River on a showboat around the turn of the last century 

Written by: David Herskovits        Directed by: David Herskovits

One good thing: It’s great to hear the songs in this glorious score—Ol’ Man River, Make Believe,  Can’t Help Lovin’ Dat Man, Bill—and often gorgeously sung, especially by Phillip Themlo Stoddard as the gambler Gaylord Ravenal and Stephanie Weeks as the singer Julie who has been passing for white

One not-so-great thing: The concept here is as muddy as the Mississippi often is and getting rid of all the scenery, putting actors in a hodgepodge of period and contemporary costumes and casting them regardless of race isn’t as daring or revelatory as this adaptation seems to think it is, particularly not for a show whose take on race relations was so bold in its day and whose stagecraft set the template for all the musicals that have followed

 

 


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