Last night, Marshall Anderson and I were at the Lyric Opera of Chicago …. but we weren’t there to hear Parsifal or The Marriage of Figaro or Samson and Dalila or any sort of standard grand opera. Instead, we were there to enjoy the Lyric’s sparkling production of the musical Showboat. No, this is in no way, shape or form an “opera,” but it does happen to be a musical that does not feel entirely out of place in a major opera company like the Lyric. First of all, it’s a work of considerable scope and spectacle, and some of the major roles were clearly conceived to be sung in very ‘legit,’ classical style. (In other words, this is not Anything Goes or Hair!) But set against those characters are others that are broadly drawn comedians singing in a very popular sort of style – and that mixture of styles is one of the most enticing things about this show.
It was also a ground-breaking work in that almost all musicals before Showboat featured threadbare stories, each of which amounted to a flimsy excuse to present a bunch of fun songs. Plots typically made little sense and almost none of it had true dramatic impact or even managed to create rich, authentic characters. That changed with Showboat, which was the first American musical to be based on a substantial work of literature: in this case the novel of the same name by Edna Therber, who had just won the Pulitzer Prize the year before she wrote Showboat. I’m not sure what exactly possessed Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II, that they would turn their back on all of the empty frivolity of preceding musicals and create a work that audaciously took on serious, delicate and potentially controversial topics – but they did it, and it changed everything. Which is not to say that Showboat is a perfect work. Far from it. The piece spans many decades but does not do all that convincing a job of carrying us across those various decades. Certain characters never feel fully real or reveal very much at all about what makes them tick. And a couple of the songs are real clunkers. But there is so much in Showboat to love, and in spite of its imperfections you have to appreciate it for the groundbreaking game-changer that it was.
For me, this show will also forever be a powerful link to one of the most memorable experiences of my entire life. My senior year in high school, I starred in Showboat on the stage of Atlantic High School. I was very much a skinny nerd at that point in my life, so for me to be onstage in the spotlight, especially trying to portray a smooth, swaggering charmer like Gaylord Ravenal, was mind-blowing for me. I had been Ragged DIck in “Rags to Riches,” the Tin Man in “The Wizard of Oz,” and Lord Pitt in a little classroom play about Benjamin Franklin – but those experiences had all happened back in grade school. This felt like an entirely different arena, and I felt like I didn’t know the first thing about how to forge a character so different from who I was. And while I was a very good baritone by that point, this role was vocally demanding, complete with a couple of very frightening high G’s. So it was scarier than scary and part of me is amazed that I even auditioned for it. Part of the reason I might have taken the plunge was that when I was a sophomore, I played the organ in the pit for AHS’s “The King and I,” which had a truly superb cast who absolutely lit up the stage. I think watching Dwight Williams and Sarah Wohlenhaus and Mark Johnson and Jan Kramer and Eric Swanson light up the stage might have made me hungry for a similar sort of experience for myself. At any rate, whether from hunger for the spotlight, temporary insanity, or some combination of the two, I auditioned for the show and was cast as Gaylord- opposite the Magnolia of Amy Nichols, a very good friend…. and that in and of itself was a huge comfort. Rounding out the cast were all kinds of other fine performers- Dave Lilienthal, Carol Olson, Mike Wolfe- and my younger brother Steve, along with all kinds of other school mates and friends. And together, under the skilled direction of Thane Hascall, we mounted what seems to have been a pretty darned good production of Showboat. And all of these years later, that experience looms large for me as a dramatic stepping stone towards the musical life I went on to enjoy.
Maybe it’s little wonder that I feel strangely protective of this work and view any performance of it with fierce and implacable suspicion and skepticism- and last night was no exception. Even though this production has garnered rave reviews and great acclamation from its audiences, I found myself applauding maybe three times all night. The rest of the time I was grimacing over rhythmic flabbiness, poor balance between voices and orchestra, poor diction, or any number of other nits that I just had to pick. I was especially dismayed by the flabby “Fish gotta swim” performance of Alyson Cambridge, who sang this vigorous number as though it were some dreamy Puccini aria. And even Morris Robinson, whose “Old Man River” performance evoked stirring cheers from the audience, left me cold. Yes his voice is incredibly big and dark and imposing, but every syllable sounded alike, to the point where nothing seemed to mean anything at all. And with this particular song, meaninglessness is the LAST thing you want. You get the idea; all night long I was like an overprotective father, shooing away would-be suitors from his darling daughter, fully convinced that none of them was worthy of her company. And yet, by the end of the evening I was tremendously glad that I had been there and heartily applauded the Lyric for giving everything they had to this wonderful show – and that makes me hopeful that someday I will be able to sit down and watch a performance of Showboat with a completely open mind and appreciative spirit, having left my Nit Picking Kit at the door with the usher.
pictured above: The final curtain call for the Lyric’s Showboat. When that beautiful showboat first came into view early in the evening, the audience erupted in cheers- me included.
<<<And if you are the least bit curious about what the AHS production of Showboat sounded like, you can go to the Listen page on my website, click on Archive, and scroll down to GB sings in Showboat, and you can hear me and the aforementioned Amy Nichols singing “You are Love.” >>>