My question for this Wednesday is for DR Elmore.
Dear DR Elmore,
I have been watching the dvd of Show Boat by the San Fransisco Opera as well as watching the concert version from PBS (it is still online). Also listening to the cd of the revival from several years ago.
I find it interesting how different they are. The first act is pretty much the same (added song or deleted song), but the second act has some changes.
In the SF Opera version, Magnolia is the Broadway star and Adult Kim only appears as a non-speaking part in the last scene. In the other versions, Kim is the one who went on to be the big Broadway star.
Do you know why in some versions there are different songs? "I Have the Room Above Her" is in the revival version. "Dance the Night Away" is in the SFOpera version. "I Might Fall Back on You" is only in the concert version. Were some songs deleted because the show is too long?
Yes, I know McGlinn made an excellent recording. Maybe someday when I place an order with Amazon I will remember to buy it.
DR Laura, SHOW BOAT has never been in a frozen state since the 1930s. In 1946 Kern and Hammerstein revised it (one friend of mine sneeringly calls the 1946 version the "
Carousel version" of SHOW BOAT) to conform to the new "serious musical theatre" format, removing what Hammerstein felt were out-of-date practices and lowering Ravenal's voice from tenor to baritone. This version, which was scaled down after its 1946 Broadway run, became the official rental version and is still available for performances.
In 1980, John McGlinn worked for the Houston Grand Opera to attempt to restore the show to its pre-1946 status. Between 1927 and 1945, there was a published vocal score that included music that was cut before the 1927 show ever opened on Broadway and there was a 1936 film that included three new songs, including "I Have the Room Above." This film, like the show, falls apart in the second half, but it is really wonderful since a lot of the cast is from the original Broadway production, including the great Helen Morgan as Julie.
Then, in 1988, John McGlinn recorded the original 1927 SHOW BOAT with an appendix of everything written for SHOW BOAT that he could locate: the song written for London, 1928, the songs written for 1927 and dropped, the 1936 movie songs, and the 1946 song for Kim, "Nobody else But Me." In the original and all productions with Kern and Hammerstein, the actress playing Magnolia played Broadway star Kim Ravenal, to show how the generations of performers continue, before going off, changing clothes, putting on a grey wig and coming back as Magnolia to join Ravenal for the finale.
The last Broadway revival created a lot of new problems and added one of the 1936 movie songs. I believe the PBS San Francisco production includes the movie song "Ah Still Suits Me" for Queenie and Joe.
Before the Rodgers & Hammerstein Organization was absorbed by the Dutch firm Imagem, there were several attempts to have me edit a complete edition of SHOW BOAT. I regret that it never happened.
A lot of productions today want to go back as far as possible to the original but I think the loose structure and the urge to make the show "contemporary" scares productions into keeping more of the 946 edition.
