David Herskovits said, “Show Boat is famously unresolved; it has been endlessly reworked, cut, emended, added to, and rearranged. Its gorgeous songs pulse through a chaotic story that is a back-stage ...

This minimalist staging strips 'Show Boat' to its bones, scraping away a century of cultural rust and sentimentality to reveal an often deeply sad and frequently funny masterpiece of music-theater.

Unlike the waterway of its most famous song, the landmark 1927 musical “Show Boat”—which integrated song and story with a sophistication that set the American musical on its path to full ...