As Magnolia and Ravenal, Broadway stars soprano Ashley Brown and baritone Nathan Gunn deliver vocal fireworks to match their romantic electricity, notably in their duet “Why Do I Love You?”īrown is also irresistible as the starry-eyed would-be actress who knows everyone’s lines in the show boat’s stock melodrama. What’s instantly striking about the Lyric’s “Show Boat” is the superb singing throughout the cast and from the chorus. It is no stretch to see this musical as the antecedent of “Porgy and Bess,” by George and Ira Gershwin and DuBose Heyward, which opened just eight years later. What Kern and Hammerstein devised was a solid play elaborated through musical components, something more like operetta.
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“Show Boat” also changed the definition of the staged musical, which previously was little more than a series of light-hearted songs and dances linked by a loose story line. A key, tragic element of the drama is the secret ( and at the time illegal) marriage, between two members of the show boat acting company, a white man and a woman of bi-racial parentage. While it is vibrantly, wonderfully entertaining, the production also probes deep into the dramatic heart of “Show Boat.” Based on Edna Ferber’s novel of the same title, the 1927 musical – with music by Jerome Kern and lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II – follows the fortunes of Magnolia Hawks, the stage-struck daughter of a show boat captain, and the handsome gambler Gaylord Ravenal.įrom their chance meeting on the show boat Cotton Blossom in the 1880s, the story spans some 40 years, tracing the couple’s ill-starred marriage and Magnolia’s successful stage career to a poignant conclusion in the late 1920s.Īt the same time, “Show Boat” deals openly with racial prejudice on the Mississippi delta and the hard life of black people in the first generations after the Civil War – a time not so far removed from the show’s premiere in 1927, or roughly the same remove as we are today from the Vietnam War. Davison and the lavish costumes created by Paul Tazewell, the Lyric’s “Show Boat” is indeed a showcase for what the musical can be. Between the sympathetic and artful conducting of John DeMain and the affectionate, stage-savvy direction of Francesca Zambello, the stunning sets by Peter J.
Here are not only the resources but also the standards of a major opera company brought to bear on one of the greatest of American musicals. The Lyric Opera of Chicago’s first venture into the American musical, with “Show Boat,” is so complete a triumph, so rewarding both musically and theatrically, that any praise for performances must defer to kudos for the production as a whole. The Opera House is-I believe-the appropriate venue for these great classic musicals that require full-voiced, 'legit' singing." "One memorable song follows another, each an enduring thread in the fabric of American popular culture.Review: “Show Boat” by Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II, at the Lyric Opera of Chicago through March 17 ***** By Lawrence B. According to General Director David Gockley, "Show Boat will be done in grand opera fashion in the way the creators conceived. "No one should miss it" (Chicago Sun-Times). Patricia Racette, Heidi Stober and Nathan Gunn head a dazzling cast. The magnificent Jerome Kern-Oscar Hammerstein II score, which includes such classic songs as "Ol’ Man River", "Can’t Help Lovin’ Dat Man," "Make Believe" and "You Are Love," will sound glorious "under the authoritative baton of music-theater maestro John DeMain" (Chicago Tribune). Director Francesca Zambello’s grand-scale production is "a triumph-a stylish, fast-paced and colorful show that had the capacity audience on its feet, cheering loud and long" (Chicago Classical Review). A true classic of American musical theater, this tale of life on the Mississippi from the 1880s to the 1920s is both a poignant love story and a powerful reminder of the bitter legacy of racism.