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

an outline of the 1927 Show Boat (scenes and songs) as listed in a souvenir program for the week beginning Monday, October 28, 1928, by which time changes had long since been consolidated (the program is reproduced in Kreuger, “Show Boat,” 68–69). For convenience, the outline is keyed to the show numbers as they appear in the original Harms vocal score. Songs listed in the Harms score (but not listed in the souvenir program) are placed in italics. The website also provides an encapsulated view of the most important subsequent productions.

24. EMI/Angel CDS 7–49108–2.

25. Kreuger, “Show Boat,” viii–ix.

26. With the issuing of McGlinn’s reconstructed recording, a libretto that is virtually complete for those scenes where underscored dialogue plays an important role (act I, scenes 1, 2, 4, 7, 8) finally became widely available. Act II, scene 3, is also nearly complete and the text of act II, scenes 4 and 9, is well represented. The only previously published libretto is based on the 1928 London production (Chappell, 1934).

27. John McGlinn, “Notes on ‘Show Boat,’” 28.

28. McGlinn candidly concedes that his recording is not absolutely complete. He does not, for example, include the Entr’acte to act II or several “utility arrangements … which are in any case verbatim repeats of music recorded herein,” and he notes also the omission of underscoring in act II, scene 2. McGlinn leaves unmentioned the unfortunate absence of the interpolated “Good Morning, Carrie” from the same scene and Gustav Lange’s “Blumenlied” (“Flower Song”). The latter served Kern as the “Incidental Music, played on the Stage during the presentation of ‘The Parson’s Bride’” in act I, scene 6.

29. The dramatic changes are fully reflected in Chappell’s published libretto of 1934, but the published vocal score, while it contains “Dance Away the Night” and omits “Good-bye, Ma Lady Love” and “Hey, Feller,” does not include “How’d You Like to Spoon with Me?” and prints “Ol’ Man River” in the original C major (to better feature Robeson’s basso profundo; the London “Ol’ Man River” was transposed down a whole tone to B from its New York key of C major).

30. After 418 performances the 1946 revival would spawn two phenomenal national tours (fourteen cities and forty-five cities, respectively) that would last the better part of the next two years.

31. Kreuger, “Show Boat,” 160–63. The legacy of the 1946 production is largely preserved in the Welk vocal score and the unpublished libretto distributed by the Rodgers and Hammerstein Theatre Library for those who would produce Show Boat over the next five decades. Missing, however, from both the Welk score and the acting edition of the 1946 libretto is Kim as an adult and her song “Nobody Else but Me.” This was the song that replaced Norma Terris’s impersonations and Edith Day’s new song for the London production, “Dance Away the Night.” Although he acknowledges that it was made “to facilitate travel and trim the running time to avoid overtime fees for the stage hands,” Kreuger asserts that these changes “strengthen the reunion of Magnolia and Ravenal.” Ibid., 170.

32. For Kreuger, the three scene cuts “were made to help trim the lengthy show to a more conventional running time,” and, since “developments in scenic technology permitted speedier set changes than were possible in the 1920s,” such “front” scenes (including act I, scene 3) were an unnecessary impediment to contemporary possibilities in stagecraft. Kreuger also defends another deletion when he writes that “although the replacement of one song for another in the same spot requires the sacrifice of ‘I Might Fall Back on You,’ the better of the two songs is retained; and the script probably benefits from far smoother action.” Ibid., 160 and 162.

33. Ethan Mordden, “‘Show Boat,’” New Yorker, July 3, 1989, 83.

34. Ibid.

35. The London production that docked on July 29 at the Adelphi Theatre stayed afloat longer than any previous production, closing 910 performances later on September 29, 1973. Its legacy is preserved on a recording promoted somewhat inaccurately in the jacket notes as “the first and only complete recording containing all the lyrics and music.” Stanyon Records 10048 (two LPs).

36. The first of these, “How’d You Like to Spoon with Me?” (Kern’s first London success of 1905 with lyrics by Edward Laska) served in the 1971 London production as an interpolation to replace “I Might Fall Back on You.” The second, “Dance Away the Night,” which Kern had written as a new last song for the London Magnolia, Edith Day, in 1928, was transferred to Frank Schultz.

37. “Gallivantin’ Aroun’” (sung by Irene Dunne in the film) was not used.

38. In both the Playbill (“Director’s Notes”) and in his Tony Award acceptance speech, Prince gratefully acknowledged McGlinn’s scholarship. Hal Prince, “Director’s Notes,” Playbill 95/11 (1994), n.p.

39. Variety critic Jeremy Gerard noted that these signs were “just about the only things that remain unchanged over the show’s 40–year span”; reprinted in New York Theatre Critics’ Reviews 55/13 (1994): 262.

40. Prince, “Director’s Notes,” n.p.

41. Ibid., n.p. Robeson’s “Ah Still Suits Me” from the film was used as underscoring.

42. Kim’s “It’s Getting Hotter in the North,” dropped after opening night in 1927, was restored as a dance number; Queenie’s “Hey, Feller!” (gone since the 1928 London production) and “How’d You Like to Spoon with Me?” from London 1971 were relegated to underscoring.

43. Robert Simon, “Jerome Kern,” 24.

44. A precedent for this technique can be found in 1916, when to accompany the silent film Gloria’s Romance, Kern had composed “fifteen themes for specific characters and situations.” Bordman, Jerome Kern, 128.

45. Not only do these motives avoid notes outside the scale, but they also capture the openness of the river as well as its simplicity and purity by avoiding the tensions inherent in half steps.

46. Bordman was perhaps the first to note “that the Cotton Blossom theme is essentially the beginning of the chorus of ‘Ol’ Man River’ played in reverse and accelerated.” Bordman, Jerome Kern, 290. The relationship between the “Cotton Blossom,” “Ol’ Man River,” and Cap’n Andy’s themes is