Goodspeed opera house showboat cast3/17/2023 ![]() ![]() When Show Boat was revived at the Casino Theater in New York just four years after its original production at the Ziegfeld I saw a New York first-night audience, after Paul Robeson's singing of 'Ol' Man River,' shout and cheer and behave generally as I've never seen an audience behave in any theater in all my years of playgoing.įor the 1946 revival of Show Boat, my father Oscar Hammerstein II inserted a note in the program giving P.G. I have never heard it since without that emotional surge. This was music that would outlast Jerome Kern's day and mine. ![]() He played and sang "Ol' Man River." The music mounted, mounted, and I give you my word my hair stood on end, the tears came to my eyes, I breathed like a heroine in a melodrama. He didn't play the piano particularly well and his singing voice, though true, was negligible. And then Jerome Kern appeared at my apartment late one afternoon with a strange look of quiet exultation in his eyes. I had melted under the bewitching strains of "Make Believe" and of "Why Do I Love You?". I had heard "Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man" with its love-bemused lyric. Once or twice everything was seemingly abandoned because Ziegfeld said he couldn't produce the play. In 2011, a new version of Show Boat, adapted for a smaller cast and orchestra, opened at the Goodspeed Opera House in East Haddam, Connecticut, under the direction of Rob Ruggiero.Īs the writing of the musical play proceeded (and its ups and downs were even more heartbreaking than those of most musical plays) I heard bits and pieces of the score. Prince's 1994 production earned Show Boat its longest Broadway run with 947 performances. After its initial run, Show Boat returned to Broadway no less than six times: in 19 at the Ziegfeld Theatre in 19 at New York City Center in 1983 at the Uris (Gershwin) Theatre featuring Donald O'Connor as Cap'n Andy and in 1994, again at the Gershwin, under the direction of Harold Prince. ![]() In 1951, MGM released a full-color film adaptation, using many of the songs from the stage adaptation but reworking much of the plot. In 1936, Universal Studios released a film adaptation of the musical featuring Irene Dunne, Allan Jones, Hattie McDaniel and Paul Robeson. The show was a great critical and popular success, running for a total of 572 performances. Show Boat opened on Broadway at the Ziegfeld Theatre on December 27, 1927. ![]()
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