Divalicious Review! A Show/Boat Musical Finding Its River
By Caroline Cao | January 18, 2025 | Celebrity & Culture
The 1927 Show Boat (music by Jerome Kern and book and lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II) proves that musicals can be a serious repository for social reflection—as far as a white gaze could go. The show, adapting the novel by Edna Ferber, has been raised to much grappling over depicting its Black characters (the cast of the Lincoln Center Show Boat had their own takes on singing the N-word).
Now that Show Boat has entered the public domain, the stripped-down Show/Boat: A River staging by David Herskovits markets itself as a “bold imagining” to a head-scratching effect with crumbs of promises. It’s Herskovits’ instinctive idea to lean into artifice awareness and discomforts, but its momentum feels confusing.
In this 2025 under-the-radar reimagining of Show/Boat at NYU Skirball, this production elects to restore and reimagine the “In Dahomey” song at a world’s fair sequence of exotic and oriental curiosities for the white spectators. Here, white people gawk at Black people singing a Zulu folk song (which was incorporated into this production) and behold them as monsters. We’re suddenly reminded we’re at a sideshow, and the singers appear to shudder at performing for the white gaze, their communion perverted by performative expectations. The production dares a passionate point-of-view that emerges briefly before the show rests into its anesthetized design.
Stephanie Weeks (Julia) and Rebbekah Vega-Romero (Magnolia)
This “In Dahomey” echoes an expression of violation at this musical’s opening. In the first scenes of the original text, an antagonist interrogates his Black servant for wearing a gifted piece of jewelry, an action that prefaces a major reveal. In this reimagining, actress Suzanne Darrell bemoans, “That man was asking me where I got my jewelry,” with the cutting indignation of a contemporary Black woman.
But most of Show/Boat rolls on with these tonal punctures few and far between. The rest of the staging lies in the conceptual realm rather than a complete one. The multiracial cast wears sashes that denote “White,” which might accidentally slip off the bodies. I imagine that director Herskovits might not have noted “let it happen,” as they seem an accidental commentary that race as a construct can be a slippery one (something that befalls Julia).
The Act 1 scenic design (by Kaye Voyce) brings attention to the segregated doorways labeled “Black“ and “White.” When Magnolia (Rebbekah Vega-Romero) weeps after Julia (an emotionally invested Stephanie Weeks), she almost scrambles through the “Black” doorway, and it highlights the cruelty of the racial barriers. Act 2 swaps out white sashes for white ribbons, perhaps a clever enough statement on how the white construct evolves. However, while these underline the racial politics, the design is left uninhabited and wanting.
Even for vocal talents, the musical oddly yields underrehearsed deliveries, which doesn’t appear to be the fault of the performers. The production has its sparks, such as Vega-Romero cinching the lilt-laced girlishness of Magnolia, a cadence that underscores Magnolia’s co-opting of Julia’s Black song. And then there’s the vocal zenith of Alvin Crawford’s warm “Ol’ Man River.”
There is one big choice. In the original production, Julie — an oft-examined example of the “tragic mulatto” — sacrifices her song, her Black song, so that the destitute white Magnolia can sing and profit out of it. The production teases a radical take on how she might feel about her sacrifice. Tenderness might cross her face as she watches. Then the actress rips off her white ribbon and storms away, and it’s the last we see of this character. Her departure can be read as “I’m exiting this white construct.”
Alvin Crawford and company
I found that the low-budget creative choices of Show/Boat were hampered by the grandeur of the Skirball Auditorium and wondered if it could express its choices more in a smaller venue. In parts, especially the dimensions of its “In Dahomey” reimagining, this Show/Boat can show strong foundations. I might be interested in an evolved version of this production if it ever sails along the horizon.
Show/Boat: A River is running until January 26 at NYU Skirball.
Photos credit: Greg Kessler
