Free Enchanted Evenings:The Broadway Musical from 'Show Boat' to Sondheim and Lloyd Webber by Geoffrey Block Page A

Hawks’s introduction of Rubber-Face Smith in the opening scene. Although Kreuger regretted the absence of style in the stage performances, he unhesitatingly supported these revisions as improvements. 32
    Theater historian and critic Ethan Mordden in a
New Yorker
essay on
Show Boat
published one year after the McGlinn reconstruction assesses the 1946 version far less favorably. Although, like Kreuger, Mordden recognizes the incalculable influence of
Oklahoma!
and
Carousel
, he regrets the alterations that “homogenized a timeless, diverse piece into a document of a specific place and time: Broadway mid-nineteen-forties.” 33 Mordden continues:
In 1927, “Ol’ Man River” and the miscegenation scene and “Bill” derived their power partly from a comparison with the musical-comedy elements dancing around them. Take the fun away, the apparently aimless vitality, and “Show Boat” loses its transcendence. The 1946 “Show Boat” is dated now, too consistent, too much of its day. The 1927 “Show Boat” is eclectic, of many days. Nevertheless, the revisions were locked in. American “Show Boat” revivals honored the 1946 version without question, and it became standard. 34
    In contrast to most of the musicals discussed in subsequent chapters,
Show Boat
directors and their public can choose among two authentic stageworthy versions and one film version (considerably fewer, for instance, than the possibilities extant for Handel’s
Messiah
). More commonly, they have chosen to assemble a version of their own. Just as conductors have for two hundred years created their own
Messiah
hybrids, the 1971 London and 1994 Broadway revivals presented provocative conflations of several staged versions of
Show Boat
as well as the 1936 film. 35 For example, two songs from the 1971 London revival that were part of the 1928 London version did not appear in the original 1927 New York production. 36 Kern’s swan song and last attempt at a final song for the show, “Nobody Else but Me,” introduced in the 1946 New York revival (but not in the touring production), also appears, albeit sung out of context in 1971 by superstar Cleo Laine, who refused the role of Julie unless she was assigned a third song. From the 1936 Universal film the 1971 London revival recycled two of its three new songs, “Ah Still Suits Me” (for Paul Robeson’s Joe) and “I Have the Room above Her” (for Allan Jones’s Ravenal), sung by their rightful characters but in newly conceived dramatic contexts. 37 Although critical assessments may vary, the 1971 London production provides an unmistakable example of the triumph of accessibility over authenticity.
    In director Hal Prince’s revival of
Show Boat
in 1994 (the first Broadway production to take full advantage of McGlinn’s research), “brothers” and later “coloreds” “all work on the Mississippi” and racial prejudice is acknowledged onstage throughout the evening. 38 Blacks move scenery and pick up messes left by whites, whites steal the Charleston dance steps from black originators, and an endlessly reprised “Ol’ Man River” sung by MichelBell looms larger than ever. In scenes depicting 1927 as well as the late 1880s, audiences could see conspicuous signs over drinking fountains and elsewhere marked “White Only” and “Colored Only.” 39
    Prince and production designer Eugene Lee employed modern stagecraft “to create montages which integrate a leap of years, restore serious incidents and clarify plot and character motivations.” 40 From the 1928 London version Prince borrowed “Dance Away the Night” when he needed some music for the radio. From the 1936 film he used Ravenal’s suggestive song, “I Have the Room above Her” and, more pervasively, “motion picture techniques such as cross-fades, dissolves and even close-ups.” 41 As in the 1946 Broadway production, Frank and Ellie’s “I Might Fall Back on You” was dropped (although used as underscoring) and dance