![]() If the storytelling by necessity seems a bit ragged – the second act hurtles across the years, reliant here on some deft video footage to apprise us of a still-aborning nation – that score constitutes its own unassailable glory. Show Boat, meanwhile, remains a marvel not least in its scope, the adaptation of Edna Ferber's novel encompassing 40 years to tell of a changing America amid which the one constant, of course, is time, as imaged in the "ol' man river" that stands as the musical's primordially stirring leitmotif. Indeed, it was sweet on press night to see the director seated alongside his Merrily We Roll Along colleagues from nearly 16 years ago, Samantha Spiro and Julian Ovenden. Lacking the (somewhat self-conscious) majesty of the Hal Prince production from the 1990s that played Toronto, New York, and London (that last date at the Prince Edward Theatre in 1998), this version allows the singers to show their acting chops: think of it as a grander-scale version of the Donmar musical stagings in which Evans launched his acting career. ![]() And surely no Broadway title remains more iconic than this one – the 1927 collaboration between Oscar Hammerstein II and Jerome Kern that set the musical form on course towards a level of maturity and daring that few up until that time would have thought possible.īut which Show Boat to stage? That as ever remains the question with a piece that exists in various forms large and small, Evans having chosen a newly-filleted version first seen at Connecticut's Goodspeed Opera House in 2011. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |