A water cooler. An electrical guitar. A sash.
Even when you already know beforehand that the Goal Margin manufacturing you’re attending shall be an experimental reboot of “Present Boat,” the great-grandfather of American musicals, chances are you’ll discover the three gadgets that greet you on an in any other case clean stage disorienting.
Maybe, you assume, as you’re taking your seat at NYU Skirball in Manhattan, the water cooler alludes to the Mississippi River — or to aesthetic thirst. The electrical guitar, you think about, marks the intention of the director and adapter David Herskovits to carry the 97-year-old musical into the current. (The title has been modishly restyled “Present/Boat: A River.”) However the sash, draped on a mic stand, stays mysterious. In block capital letters it says WHITE.
Audiences on the premiere of “Present Boat” in late 1927 would have taken that as a right. The musical is fully the work of white folks: Jerome Kern wrote the music and Oscar Hammerstein II the phrases, based mostly on Edna Ferber’s novel. It was produced by Florenz Ziegfeld, that self-proclaimed glorifier of the (white) American lady. The character of Queenie, a riverboat cook dinner, was initially performed by a white actor in blackface.
It’s largely about white folks, too. Although Black characters determine in highly effective subplots, and are extra absolutely rounded than in most mainstream depictions from that point, they’re nonetheless stereotypes. Worse, their tales are usually subservient and intermittent.
In contrast, the principle story carefully follows 40 years within the uncommon lifetime of a white lady named Magnolia who grows up as a part of the Cotton Blossom troupe plying the Mississippi. She marries a rake named Ravenal, raises their daughter, Kim, alone and finally turns into profitable by singing “coloured” songs for white audiences.
In in the present day’s parlance, “Present Boat” facilities whiteness.
“Present/Boat,” the reboot, honorably seeks to undo that. When the actors, forged with out regard to race, placed on sashes just like the one seen at first, signifying that the character they’re presently enjoying is white, they’re implicitly reversing the anticipated standpoint. To be white is to be the exception right here and, in a manner, to be culpable. No marvel the silky sashes preserve slipping off.
Chances are you’ll too. To the extent the manufacturing succeeds as progressive optics, it does so at an enormous price to coherence and thus pleasure. Just like the white guilt it mirrors, it’s too usually an excessive amount of of a chore to encourage significant reflection.
The chore is acquainted in case you go to loads of experimental theater. (“Present/Boat” is a part of the 2025 Beneath the Radar competition.) Confusion is a part of your penance. Right here, with dozens of characters performed by simply 10 folks, and Magnolia’s mom performed for some purpose by two, following the rangy story is particularly tough, even when you already know it nicely. Maybe title tags would have been extra useful than sashes.
The dearth of sturdy visible markers — the set, by Kaye Voyce, is rarely literal — makes it more durable to know the place you’re and, generally, who’s chatting with whom. A convent scene between Ravenal (Philip Themio Stoddard) and Kim is normally a surefire tear-jerker; as a result of this manufacturing doesn’t put Kim onstage for the interplay, I didn’t even notice it was occurring.
Story logic and staging focus are in any case secondary. The riverboat reveals, hosted by Steven Rattazzi’s Captain Andy, are so intentionally poorly acted, it appears unimaginable that they might have saved an viewers. (The appearing is usually wood anyway.) And since Dina El-Aziz’s partly deconstructed costumes do extra to establish sorts than people, I saved dropping Magnolia (Rebbekah Vega-Romero) within the combine.
Much more problematic is the misfit between the manufacturing’s sturdy intentions and the stronger uncooked materials, which vigorously resists reshaping. Not that the story was ever fairly coherent; chopping Ferber’s novel all the way down to a serviceable libretto, Hammerstein needed to cherry-pick the turning factors, particularly within the hectic second act. However Kern’s rating is a marvel of selection, invention and emotion. In music that appropriates Mitteleuropean operetta, symphonic doom, folks tune, jazz, vaudeville and different genres, he confidently sketches particular person characters and teams whereas additionally marking the passage of time and style.
Regardless of beautiful vocal preparations (by Dionne McClain-Freeney) and surprisingly wealthy orchestrations (by Dan Schlosberg) for a band of simply six gamers, little of that registers right here. Actually not within the “white” songs, that are offered nearly fully in scare quotes, as in the event that they have been proof of against the law. The “Black” songs fare significantly better. “Can’t Assist Lovin’ Dat Man” and “Invoice” are highlights for Julie (Stephanie Weeks), the mixed-race star of the showboat who has been passing as white. The dockworker Joe (Alvin Crawford) will get to rumble the anthemic “Ol’ Man River.”
However even these classics apparently want reframing. (“Present Boat” entered public area in 2023, so something goes.) The electrical guitar known as into service to increase the aural timeline unconvincingly to the Nineteen Fifties and past. Many songs have been given pointless new shapes or spoken-lyric introductions, turning particular person phrases this manner and that like dinosaur bones from a dig.
Nonetheless, that is generally efficient. I’m grateful that as a substitute of the N-word, which was the very first thing heard within the unique “Present Boat,” the primary phrase you hear in “Present/Boat” is “Pay attention.” It’s a sensible manner of acknowledging the necessity to concentrate to historical past, not bury it. And a rewrite of the tune “In Dahomey,” sung by faux-African performers on the 1893 Chicago World’s Truthful, interrupts the unique’s queasy minstrelsy with an actual African folks tune, “Dumisa,” sung gorgeously by Temídayo Amay and a small choir.
That tune made me want “Present/Boat” had additional unmoored itself from “Present Boat.” So did Caroline Fermin’s choreography, which feels contemporary while not having to construct an argument towards the unique.
That sort of argument is normally a nasty wager. If a piece is simply too objectionable to carry out, don’t carry out it. If you wish to exchange it with a brand new work informed from a brand new and arguably extra genuine perspective, do this. However the midway remedy on this case seems like conserving the bathtub water and drowning the infant. As many more-faithful revivals have proved, what’s nice about “Present Boat” is just not actually separable from what isn’t. Not even with the assistance of a sash or a slash.
Present/Boat: A River
By way of Jan. 26 at NYU Skirball, Manhattan; nyuskirball.org. Working time: 2 hours half-hour.
