This classic musical, first produced in 1927, is a treasure. It combines lively, melodious music by Jerome Kern, sung with fervor and sweetness, with exciting dancing and a serviceable, sentimental story. You leave the theater with tunes in your head and tears in your eyes. The play has more to do with soaps than with psychoanalysis; if you want a rest from psychody-namics and a vacation to a land of enchantment, Show Boat is the ship to take.
The story—a variant of “Boy meets girl. Boy loses girl. Will boy and girl get together again?”—is enriched by overtones of racial and family conflict. Magnolia (Rebecca Luker), the daughter of Cap'n Andy (John McMartin) and Parthy (Elaine Stritch), who run the Cotton Blossom, a Mississippi showboat, falls in love with Gaylord Ravenal, a river gambler. They marry, leave for Chicago, have a child, and then break up. In the last act the child, Kim, now a Broadway entertainer (Tammy Amerson), puts on a lavish show for the folks at home and, better yet, for the Gershwin Theater audience.
This production deviates to a degree from the original play. The book by Oscar Hammerstein II, based on Edna Fetter's novel, has been modified to further the story and avoid any sense of racial prejudice. Although, as Harold Prince states in the Director's Notes that appear in the Playbill, Hammerstein in his plays ardently and repeatedly “took fierce aim at prejudice in our society,” some have seen an unfortunate stereotype in Show Boat, which Prince was determined to eliminate.
The show includes music written for but omitted from earlier productions and has changed the context in which “Why Do I Love You?” is sung. Originally a love song between Gaylord and Magnolia, it is now sung to the baby Kim by her grandmother, Parthy, and repeated later, eventually becoming the musical lead-in to a sprightly Charleston.
The current production retains the defeatist words of the original “OF Man River,” in which the Black laborer Joe sings “I'm tired of livin' and skeered of dyin',” while adding the upbeat, aggressive lyrics that Paul Robeson, a fabulous Joe, sang as he gradually revised the lyrics in the 1930s: “I must keep fighting until I'm dying.” The latter words, sung at play's end, demonstrate the changing attitudes over the forty years that Show Boat spans.
This production neither requires nor employs great acting, but it does demand excellent voices, and it gets them. Michel Bell's sonorous bass is especially effective as he glorifies “Ol' Man River.” The cast sings “Make Believe,” “After the Ball,” “Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man,” and other longtime favorites with dash and emotion. The choreography by Susan Stroman is particularly vivacious and witty, a compensation for the corny but nonetheless amusing verbal humor. The sparkling Charleston near the end of the play is outstanding, as is the funny acrobatic dancing of Joel Blum.
Show Boat deserves the numerous awards, including five Tonys, lavished on it. The members of the audience, enjoying the play, are winners too. At the Gershwin, 222 West 51st Street.
Death Defying Acts, three one-act plays by David Mamet, Elaine May, and Woody Allen, is hilarious. As I roared with laughter, I looked about me to see if any members of our profession were in the audience—for much of the humor was at the expense of mental health professionals, including analysts. I saw no colleagues and could identify no specific patients, but I'll bet that many of the viewers fit into those categories.
The first of the plays, Mamet's The Interview, was a parody of a neutral but stressful interview in which the examiner was for the most part stonyfaced and silent. He would make a few reflective comments as the interviewee sweat and stammered with anxiety. Were it not that the man under scrutiny turned out to be a lawyer, one might have guessed we were witnessing a caricature of an interview for admission to a psychoanalytic institute or acceptance for analytic treatment. The surprising conclusion reveals the purpose of the laugh-laden interrogation.
May's Hotline is even funnier than the first play. The setting is a Suicide Center that receives phone calls from the depressed and desperate. The interactions and attitudes of the personnel are sidesplitting. Clichés rule the day as the psychiatrist in charge urges the paraprofessionals to examine their motivations and decries their “arrogance”—and his own—at hoping to heal or save the callers. Linda Lavin, as a suicidal woman who gets a great deal of pleasure aggravating the paraprofessional who takes her call, turns what may seem an insensitive exploitation into a wildly comical interaction.
The last play, Allen's Central Park West, is by far the funniest. A woman analyst, who must be a member of a non-Freudian school since she roils at the suggestion that she would go to bed with an orthodox analyst, finds herself in a distressing situation: her husband of many years has decided to leave her for another woman. One outrageous complication after another, involving patients, lovers, and colleagues, has the audience howling with delight. Farce is supplemented by one-liner put-downs until the play reaches a rollicking conclusion. All the characters may not be happy at the end, but the entire audience leaves the theater jolly and sated.
The cast is skilled and often scathing in their wit. Linda Lavin, since replaced by Valerie Harper, excels as the suicidal woman and the friend of the psychiatrist. Debra Monk is devastatingly delightful as the betrayed psychiatrist. Paul Guilfoyle executes a triumphant triple play as the interviewee, the psychiatrist, and the unfaithful husband. Gerry Becker adds immensely to the evening's entertainment as the interviewer, the hotline paraprofessional, and, in the Allen piece, a manic-depressive friend of the analyst. At the Variety Ark, 110 Third Avenue.
Jules Glenn