“Show Boat”

Posted by Gail M. Burns - August 2010

If you enjoy hearing beautiful music beautifully sung by beautiful people in beautiful costumes, run, don’t walk, to get your tickets to Show Boat at the Mac-Haydn. By far the oldest show in this season’s line-up is easily the most engaging and enduring property the Mac has staged this summer, and it is a perfect fit for their company and their house.

I should hasten to explain that this is not the best of all possible books for Show Boat. The original libretto, written in 1927 by Oscar Hammerstein II (1895-1960), was rewritten many times before its New York opening. During the intervening decades various versions have been presented on stage and on film, and this isn’t the best of them. Edna Ferber’s popular 1926 novel of the same name focuses largely on Magnolia and Gaylord’s daughter, Kim (named because she was born on the Mississippi River simultaneously in the states of Kentucky, Illinois, and Missouri). Magnolia doesn’t even get pregnant here. And she and Gaylord are reunited at the final curtain, which did happen in the 1927 staging, but doesn’t in the novel.

In fact, in this version the second act makes very little sense – 23 years pass in it and almost nothing happens. At the start Magnolia and Gaylord are deliriously happy at the Chicago World’s Fair, then he up and leaves her, and then he reappears looking much, much older, while Magnolia and her parents apparently haven’t aged a day.

Oh well, who cares when there’s all that glorious Jerome Kern (1885-1945) music to listen to and all those pretty girls and handsome men on the stage? Only occasionally, in the music, do you hear the echoes of the European operetta-style shows that it supplanted on Broadway.

Kern, in partnership with Guy Bolton and P.G. Wodehouse, had already championed musicals where song, dance and story were integrated in their shows for the Princess Theatre in London, most of which made a successful trans-Atlantic crossing. In Show Boat they not only integrated the creative elements, they integrated the cast and wrote a show about race relations. In its original the show also addressed issues of spousal abuse and child abandonment, but not here. Here you get Julie’s (Heather Dudenbostel) miscegenation story, Magnolia (Caitlin Fischer) and Gaylord (Ben Jacoby)’s love story, and the comic relief provided by Magnolia’s parents – Cap’ Andy (John Saunders, who also directed) and Parthy (Nancy Evans) Hawks – and Show Boat’s comic duo Ellie (Andrea Doto) and Frank (Seth Eliser). And occasionally Joe (Monté Howell) gets to come on and sing “Ol’ Man River,” which is always a crowd pleaser. I could have sworn he and Queenie (Yvette Monique Clark) got a fun duet in Act II, but again, this isn’t the best of all possible versions of Show Boat.

In case you aren’t familiar with the plot, Cap’n Andy and Parthy own and operate the Cotton Blossom, a Mississippi River show boat. (In Ferber’s novel the action spans the years 1890-1926.) At the start of the show their daughter, Magnolia, is just eighteen and eager to become an actress, emulating her idol, Julie, the leading lady, and her husband Steve (Andy Geary), and her friends Ellie and Frank. When Julie is discovered to be a black woman passing as white, she and Steve are forced to leave the Cotton Blossom, and Magnolia and a handsome stranger named Gaylord Ravenal, a riverboat gambler, assume the leading roles in The Parson’s Bride. The couple fall in love and elope against Parthy’s wishes but with Cap’n Andy’s blessing.

Act I takes place sequentially during a short period off time. In Act II there are several chronological leaps. Gaylord leaves Magnolia, and Frank and Ellie discover her in a seedy rooming house in Chicago where they are opening a new act at a local nightclub. Unbeknownst to any of them, Julie, now a sad and single alcoholic (no explanation is given in any version of the story as to whatever happened to Steve, who seemed desperately loyal and loving in Act I), is singing there. She quits and tells the club owner to hire Magnolia, who is a hit and reunites with her father on New Year’s Eve. Finally, we see Magnolia back on the Cotton Blossom living with her parents when Gaylord reappears and a tearful happy ending ensues.

Jacoby and Fischer are a beautiful couple who sing divinely and seem to have real romantic chemistry. They literally look like they belong on top of a wedding cake together at the end of Act I in Jimm Halliday’s glorious costumes. This is certainly Jacoby’s ultimate leading man role, and he is perfection in it, but I still want to see him, (without a mask), as a lead in a show that allows him some comic leeway as well. Maybe as Leo Bloom in The Producers?

Last time the Mac-Haydn did Show Boat in 2004 Renee Brna was so dazzling as Magnolia that I remember opening my review by proclaiming that a star was born. Turned out I was close to right – Brna has appeared on Broadway since. Fischer just misses that star quality, but she is excellent in this role. I am so very glad they let her use her own, lovely curly locks in the production and not wear the awful wig that you see in the publicity stills.

Saunders delivers Cap’n Andy’s hilarious monologue in which he performs all the roles in the finale of The Parson’s Bride himself with great vigor, and has done a fine job of directing this production with a minimum of fuss and clear sight-lines. Doto, who has been rather over-used this season, and Eliser, who was a fine LeFou in last season’s Beauty and the Beast and who has been sorely under-used this year, shine as the comic song-and-dance duo.

I saw Nancy Evans as Parthy, and I heard her fall and break her nose just before the curtain call. Stephanie Gaertner has gone on for her, and done a nice job according to my colleague Peter Bergman, but I understand Evans is doing well and will be back on stage soon. Hooray!

There aren’t enough black performers on stage in this show, and I always cringe a little when I see a beautiful and talented woman like Clark dressed as a mammy, but at least Queenie and Joe are portrayed as independent people with warm relations to their white colleagues on the Show Boat. Clark doesn’t get to sing enough (What happened to that Act II duet I remember?) but when she does it’s a treat. She and Howell are thoroughly believable as a fondly bickering long-married couple, and his rich bass voice is magnificent on “Ol’ Man River.

For people too young to know it, interracial marriage was against the law in many states well into the 20th century. The crime was called miscegenation, and it is what Julie and Steve are accused of in Act I. A person was considered a negro (warning: you will hear the N word in this show) if they had any black ancestry or, as it was worded, black blood in them. When Steve cuts Julie’s hand and swallows her blood in front of witnesses he can honestly say he has “black blood in him” and that their marriage is legal.

In casting Julie, you can cast a black woman who can pass as white, or a white woman who can pass as a black woman passing as white. Nowadays it shouldn’t be hard to find a talented young woman who appears racially ambiguous for this role. So I am mystified why Dudenbostel, who is white and looks white, was cast. She is saddled with a hideous wig and some heavy make-up that transforms her from an attractive woman into a rather frightening looking one. She sings nicely but is so wrong for the role physically that I found her performance painful.

Karla Shook is responsible for the spritely choreography, and Laura Brignull has designed a wonderfully flexible set that manages to convey the changes of time and place without interfering with the actors’ movements or the audience’s sight-lines. I own a big glossy tome about the stage and film production history of Show Boat and as I leafed through it and saw the set design sketches I realized what a massive production this can be. I was rather relieved that at the Mac-Haydn, where big sets aren’t possible, the focus shifted to the singing, dancing, and acting.

This is the final show of the 2010 Mac-Haydn season and time to raise a glass to this season’s company, who has proved themselves versatile and talented performers. I hope to see many back and the Mac, but I wish them all well in their future endeavors inside the theatre and out.

Show Boat runs August 9-22, 25-29 and September 1-5 at the fully air-conditioned Mac-Haydn Theatre on Rt. 203 in Chatham, NY. The show runs two and a half hours with one intermission and is suitable for all ages Performances are: first week: Thursday at 2 and 8, Friday at 8, Saturday at 4 and 8 and Sunday at 2 and 7 p.m.; second week: Wednesday at 2 and 8, Thursday and Friday at 8, Saturday at 4 and 8 and Sunday at 2 and 7 p.m.

Tickets are $28 and $27; $26 for all matinee seats; children under 12, $12.00. Discounts are available for groups and senior citizens and Mac-Haydn tickets are available at the ½ TIX Booths. Master Card and Visa accepted. No cancellations or refunds. Call 518-392-9292 for information and reservations. See more Mac-Haydn news and information at www.machaydntheatre.org.

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