Enchanted Evenings:The Broadway Musical from 'Show Boat' to Sondheim and Lloyd Webber Block, Geoffrey (large ebook reader .txt) 📖

obtained the 1927 libretto directly from Hammerstein himself a few days before his death in August 1960.26 Its absence has proven, however, to be an enormous headache for historians and, conversely, a source of opportunity for some directors (for example, Hal Prince), who have been given a free hand to decipher and interpret the complicated evolution and varied documentary legacy of this musical according to their personal visions.

One extended number published by Harms, “Mis’ry’s Comin’ Aroun,’” had been dropped from the production in Washington, D.C., as early as November 15 after the very first evening of the tryouts. Because Kern “insisted that the number be published in the complete vocal score,” McGlinn argued, not without justification, that Kern “hoped the sequence would have an afterlife in a more enlightened theatrical world.”27 For this reason McGlinn includes “Mis’ry” into the body of his recording rather than in an appendix.

McGlinn’s other “restorations and re-evaluations” are less convincing on historical grounds. Dropped from both the Harms score and the 1927 production were two numbers, “I Would Like to Play a Lover’s Part” (originally placed at the beginning of act I, scene 5) and “It’s Getting Hotter in the North” (act II, scene 9). The latter song was replaced by a reprise of “Why Do I Love You?” called “Kim’s Imitations,” performed by the original Magnolia, Norma Terris, who was made up to look like her daughter Kim and performed impressions of famous vaudeville stars. Since Kern did not wish to include this discarded material in the vocal score (and it was in response to Kern’s wishes that McGlinn reinserted “Mis’ry”), its presence in the body of McGlinn’s recording is questionable. One other number deleted before the December premiere, “Trocadero Opening Chorus” (at one time in act II, scene 6), was placed in the main portion of McGlinn’s recording for “technical reasons.”28

For the first London production in 1928—which premiered after the New York version had been playing for a little more than four months—Kern and Hammerstein wrote “Dance Away the Night” (replacing Kim’s reprise of “Why Do I Love You?,” itself a replacement of “Kim’s Imitations”). Also in this production Kern’s 1905 London hit, “How’d You Like to Spoon with Me?” replaced the non-Kern interpolation, “Good-bye, Ma Lady Love.” Two scenes were entirely omitted, the Convent Scene (act II, scene 4) and the scene in the Sherman Hotel Lobby (act II, scene 5), along with the song, “Hey, Feller!” (act II, scene 7). Another song, “Me and My Boss,” composed especially for Paul Robeson, who sang the role of Joe, was not used and is presumed lost.29

After returning to Broadway in 1932 for 181 performances (with several members of the 1927 cast and Robeson), the next major Broadway revival, with extensive changes by Kern and Hammerstein, arrived on January 5, 1946.30 Even the overture was new, a more traditional medley-type version to replace the “Mis’ry”-dominated overture of the 1927 production. The first word heard in the original 1927 New York production, “niggers,” had already been replaced by “coloured folks” in the 1928 London production. For the 1946 revival Hammerstein removed other references to this offensive word and rewrote a quatrain in the opening chorus in which “Coal Black Rose or High Brown Sal” was replaced by the less racially tinted phrase in dialect, “Y’work all day, y’git no fun.”

“Show Boat, the marriage of Magnolia and Ravenal at the end of act I (1946).” Photograph: Graphic House. Museum of the City of New York. Theater Collection. For a film still of this scene see p. 159.

Other changes in 1946 included a new emphasis on dance numbers, the composition of yet another song for Kim in the final scene, “Nobody Else but Me” (Kern’s final song before he died on November 11, 1945, during auditions), three major deletions (“Till Good Luck Comes My Way,” “I Might Fall Back on You,” and “Hey, Feller!” [dropped in London 1928]), an abbreviation (“C’Mon Folks”), a repositioning (“Life upon the Wicked Stage”), the deletion of two scenes (act I, scene 3, and act II, scene 5), and the rewriting of a third (act II, scene 7).31 Kreuger, who briefly discusses these changes, does not mention the elimination of local color (including banjos and tubas) and comedic elements such as Cap’n Andy 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