Show Boat, Again.

I saw Show/Boat: A River this week (Target Margin/NYU Skirball). I was, and I still am, very torn about the ethics of criticizing non-commercial, experimental work. In some ways it exists in the same New York theater eco-system and is dependent on positive attention and ticket sales, etc. But I also think the standards are different in important ways. Not lower, in fact I would argue higher. But still different. It can be very hard to accept work like this on its own terms (for one example, not expecting this show to be a “revival” of the musical Show Boat), but, though it’s hard, I think that’s what’s called for. Still, on the other hand, this kind of work shares some of the aims of commercial theater—to entertain and edify audiences, to sell tickets—so the terms are not completely different or at odds.

In the end, having such strong feelings and opinions about musical theater, I don’t know how I can not remark on this production.

The reason Show Boat endures, besides the gorgeous songs and moving story, is because it is the story of black and white people in America, which is to say the story of America. This is true on the surface level of its story and its characters and events, and it is deeply embedded in the music. It is provocative work; it was when it was written, and it is now. Any faithful production of the show gives the audience a raft of ideas for discussion and debate. And it gives artists who approach it a rich mine of stuff to think about, question, research, be moved by, argue over. It’s been revised many times in the last 100 years for film and theater, there is no “definitive” interpretation or production or even version of Show Boat, but the wrenching story and thrilling songs still enlighten and move. It literally, to me, feels like a show that is set in the late 1800s through the 1920s, at the height of Jim Crow racial terror in the South, but is about us, now.

Show/Boat: A River strips the show of its story and of most of the beauty and majesty of the music, and it adds a layer of theatrical commentary (most of it inscrutable). Where Show Boat, the musical, speaks simply and powerfully about race, Show/Boat: A River makes mud of all of that. Even if this were its intention, and I don’t think it is, it would fail as an interpretation of the musical because (besides being objectively terrible if judged by basic standards of the art form) it obfuscates the ideas inherent in the original work. But it also fails as a critique of the musical because the audience is never given any idea what the original work is.

These are thoughtful, serious artists making experimental theater, and the last thing I would want to do is disparage or discourage this kind of work. I invested most of my career in making experimental work. It is essential, and most of the people who do it are mistunderstood and under-appreciated by the wider world of theater. But I don’t think this piece was successful. It failed to say anything clear or trenchant about race (in the show or in America), and in the process obscured everything clear and trenchant that the show itself says about race in America, if you let it.