[NEohioPAL] Review of Mercury Summer Stock's "Show Boat"

[Bob Abelman]

Mercury's 'Show Boat' is buoyed by music, set adrift by staging

 

Bob Abelman

 

News-Herald, Chagrin Valley Times, Solon Times,

The Morning Journal, Geauga Times Courier

Member, American Theatre Critics Association 

 

This review will appear in the News-Herald on 8/19/11

 

For some musicals it is best to know up-front what you are getting yourself into in order to prepare yourself for what is to come.  

 

Hair has nudity.  The Rocky Horror Show requires audience participation.  Seussical: The Musical rhymes incessantly.  

 

Show Boat, first staged in 1927 and currently in production by Mercury Summer Stock, was the very first Broadway musical to have a coherent plot and integrated songs, as compared to the operettas and extravagant Ziegfeld Follies musical revues that came before it.      

 

What this tells us is that Show Boat's storytelling was a work in progress when first conceived and, as is evident in contemporary productions, is not the play's strongest suit.  

 

The plot, based largely on a novel by Edna Ferber, chronicles the lives of those living and working on a Mississippi River show boat from 1887 to 1927.  It focuses on the captain's daughter, Magnolia, who falls in love with, marries and is abandoned by a river boat gambler not long after the birth of their daughter.  

 

The play contains more than its share of moldy melodrama to tell this story.  It includes a first act that unfolds in real time yet has a second act that rapidly spans decades where virtually nothing happens and characters inexplicably change their nature.  The play unevenly and indirectly addresses racial prejudice.  

 

And, despite its innovation of integrating songs into its storyline, Show Boat overflows with music akin to operettas and musical revues.  In fact, some scenes have as many as four songs, and much of the dialogue is underscored with music.

 

Fortunately all this music is written by the incredible Jerome Kern and the incomparable Oscar Hammerstein II.  Despite its awkward storytelling, Show Boat offers absolutely wonderful songs and showcases those who perform them.  This operates right in the wheelhouse of Mercury Summer Stock and its talented troupe of performers.

 

The tempered belt of Jennifer Myor, who plays Magnolia, and the sweet tenor of Brian Marshall, who plays her husband Gaylord Ravenal, blend beautifully on the romantic "Make Believe," "I Have the Room Above Her" and "You are Love."   

 

The magnificent Maria Thomas Lister as Julie, a black entertainer who is passing for white, nails the torch song "Bill."  She also leads Magnolia and the superb black ensemble, featuring Kelvette Beacham as Queenie, in the show's best, most energized musical number "Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man."

 

Mallory King and Jonathan Ramos are delightful as the squabbling dance duo of Ellie May Chipley and Frank Schultz.  King gets to show off her skills in the comical "Life Upon the Wicked Stage," which is a fun and fluffy piece of business.

 

Best of all is Brian Keith Johnson, as the laborer Joe, and his stirring rendition of the masterpiece "Ol' Man River."  

 

The song, which melodically flows like a lazy waterway and whose lyrics capture the despair of the time of the play and the hope of the time of its premiere production, was written to be a show stopper.  As Johnson's rich baritone floats through the ancient rafters of the Brooks Theatre, this song most certainly accomplishes its goal.  

 

While this show's music is its greatest asset, its big musical production numbers are Mercury's biggest obstacles.  

 

Director and choreographer Pierre-Jacques Brault's penchant for performing huge miracles on small stages falls short here.  Indeed, the limited performance space of the Brooks Theatre is a hindrance in much of the show's staging.  Congestion complicates exits and entrances, and efforts to depict simultaneously occurring scenes by placing one in the background of the other are more confounding than effective.

 

The attention given to the show's big-picture challenges apparently took priority over the attention to detail afforded some individual performances.   

 

The charming Brian Marshall fails to instill this quality in his rendering of Gaylord Ravenal, thereby creating a distant and fairly unlikable character.  This makes it impossible to believe that Magnolia and her now-grown daughter, played nicely by Kaitlyn Dessoffy, would unconditionally welcome him back in Act 2, after decades of abandonment.

 

Much of the comic relief meant to be generated by Captain Andy and his wife Parthy is stymied because Mark Seven and Hester Lewellan-talented actors both-are neither on the same page nor of the same century.  Seven's exaggerated vaudevillian styling and Lewellan's more natural performance offer no mooring for this old married couple.     

 

Show Boat's immense musicality is its primary reason for survival but, as this Mercury Summer Stock production demonstrates, its intended size and scope is why productions have been largely limited to Broadway revivals.  

 

Show Boat continues through August 27 in The Cleveland Play House's Brooks Theatre, 8500 Euclid Ave., Cleveland.  For tickets, $15 to $18, call 216-771-5862 or visit http://mercurysummerstock.ticketleap.com.
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