"Show Boat": Still Relevant, More Spendid
Sacramento Bee
Fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly. Music Circus gotta keep going back to the first musical it ever produced. It gotta . . .
That is, it has got to for a lot of reasons. Historical significance and all that. But before we go on about how this is the
1927 show that opened up the Broadway musical stage to serious themes, about how it was already an important classic
when it launched Sacramento's summer theater tradition in 1951, perhaps we'd better point out that the latest edition
of "Show Boat" to fill the night with Jerome Kern melody is splendid. It makes for one of the most satisfying evenings
under the tent we can remember. Director Glenn Casale, going from one extreme to the other (he handled last week's
brand-new musical "Lunch"), has taken full advantage of the Music Circus' expanded rehearsal schedule (two full weeks
of preparation). Besides thrilling vocal performances, this "Show Boat" has a depth seldom witnessed beneath canvas.
It's not just a historical artifact. For all its stature, one thing that makes "Show Boat" interesting is that it was an
experiment. Casale shows us that it still can be, that there's a freshness in its sketchy storytelling. Working from Edna
Ferber's novel, librettist Oscar Hammerstein II (the same fellow who later teamed with a guy called Rodgers) crammed 40
years of turbulent American life onto the stage. The story stretches from the 1880s to the 1920s. He had to leave a lot
to the imagination. We meet the characters on the Cotton Blossom, a show boat plying the Mississippi. There's Julie,
leading lady in melodrama, and her leading man and husband Steve. When a rejected suitor exposes Julie as being of
mixed race, they're nearly arrested for criminal miscegenation. Steve (Gordon Goodman) devises a way to swear
truthfully that he has "Negro blood" in him, but their career on the boat is over. After hard years, we see Julie again, a
broken-spirited saloon singer in Chicago. Broadway's Marcia Mitzman is splendid in the role, putting a touch of
heartbreak in Julie from the first and a touch of velvet into her outstanding performance of the torch song "Bill." What a
singer. That applies as well to soul-stirring tenor Douglas Sills, who plays Gaylord Ravenal, the gambler who abandons his
beloved wife and daughter because he thinks it's for the best. With credits from Shakespeare to "Murphy Brown," Sills
puts dramatic experience into Hammerstein's lyrics. His "Only Make Believe," with the excellent Karen Culliver (another
Broadway star) as Magnolia, is enough to make a believer out of anybody. As for that sure-fire showstopper, "Ol' Man
River," the song that gives the story its metaphorical context, Sherman Ray Jacobs does the tent-pole rattling honors
with distinction. Unless you count that tiresome comic bit about gun-toting backwoodsmen seeing their first play (a
part of the show we've never cared for), there isn't a false note here. Michael McCarty, an animated, apple-shaped actor
frequently seen on TV, plays contentiously married Captain Andy and Faye DeWitt gets off those steam whistle calls of
"Andy!" as his Parthy-Anne. E. Faye DeWitt does a pip of a Queenie, who joins Julie and Magnolia on "Can't Help Lovin'
Dat Man." (It's the song that makes those comments about what fish and birds gotta do.) Cynthia Ferrer and Bob Walton
ably handle the roles of Ellie and Frank, the song-and-dance team. Sharon Halley, who also teamed with Casale on
"Lunch," is choreographer. For a sense of local tradition, note that John Z Ickes has a nice turn as Windy McLain, river
pilot and sound effects man. Note that the actor was in Music Circus' first "Show Boat," 43 years ago. For a slightly new
twist, see how Casale integrates his cast after intermission. Once the show leaves the South and its strict color
barriers, the director loses no time putting African Americans among the strolling dandies and nightclubbing swells. It
may not be historically accurate, but its a nice, understated commentary.
-Peter Haugen, Sacramento Bee
July 20, 1994
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