Through a cloak of rich and entertaining melodies Show Boat weaves hardship, class, injustice and time in an unforgettable piece of musical theatre. This new production by Melbourne’s The Production Company does exactly that: the unfolding drama is served poignantly and comes with a healthy side dish of unforced comedy.
Show Boat is based on author Edna Ferber’s own observations of life on the floating theatres that plied U.S. rivers from the 1870s to the 1930s. Underpinned by the prejudices experienced by African-Americans, it portrays three generations of unsteady relationships aboard a Mississippi show boat. Ferber’s 1926 novel of the same name was an instant success, immediately becoming fuel for composer Jerome Kern and lyricist Oscar Hammerstein, whose theatrical adaptation premièred in New York in December 1927. As with the novel, its success was instantaneous; despite this, many revisions on stage and in film, made by the authors and others, have occurred throughout its long, award-winning performance history.
Director Roger Hodgman has skilfully aligned The Production Company’s capabilities suitably, employing Goodspeed Theatre’s recent simple and direct version, but adding Robert Russell Bennett’s original orchestrations to suit the large-scale State Theatre. This production is true to Hodgman’s hopes to make evident the spirit of the authors’ intentions. Its strengths are many and the entertainment is served generously.
Immediately, the glow of the music-stand lamps and the tiered setting for the on-stage orchestra could evoke night-lights on the banks of the Mississippi. From here on, a current of on-stage orchestral boldness flows, and under the tight command of the black-bustled, Victorian-dressed musical director Kellie Dickerson, Orchestra Victoria’s 25 members wrapped the performance in musical warmth, pathos and jollity. Kern’s music is complemented with gusto from a powerful and melodious chorus even when several scenes appeared thin in members, namely during Magnolia and Ravenal’s hasty 1887 wedding celebration concluding Act I, and Act II’s 1899 New Year’s Eve celebration at the Trocadero Nightclub.
But generally for me, set designer Christina Schmidt’s stage disappoints. Spanning the background, a large white cinema screen either tells us photographically we’re on the banks of the Mississippi (the paddle-steamer, Cotton Blossom appears rather ghostly) or in the city of Chicago. An unadorned raised platform (which represents the show boat’s deck) sits before it. If the range and quality of the three or four projections were theatrically smarter, it could be more successful. But overall, there’s a feeling of disconnection from the foreground where the scene shifts seemed to make do with very little in the way of screens and props, rather making even the action feel weighed down on the large flat stage. Similarly, Matt Scott’s lighting is limited in its visual effects, relying principally on top-lit moody blues and warm yellows. The Trocadero Nightclub setting is the production’s more successful visual moment in the way it spreads across the stage to encompass the orchestra.