The musical introduced out among the best work from each: wit, chew and heartbreak within the libretto, and infectious melodies, cinematic underscoring and operatic sophistication within the rating. Every decade of the story is indicated by musical signposts like spirituals and parlor songs within the nineteenth century, and an interpolation of George Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue” within the Twenties.
As a result of music is so central to the plot, Kern and Hammerstein additionally wrote essential diegetic songs. Within the first act Julie, the present boat’s prima donna, sings “Can’t Assist Lovin’ Dat Man,” which Queenie, the Black prepare dinner, interrupts by saying, “How come y’all know that track?” She has solely heard “coloured folks” sing it earlier than, she says, a revelation that presages Julie being unmasked as combined race.
In Act II, years later, Magnolia, who’s white and like a bit of sister to Julie, auditions with “Can’t Assist” at a theater in Chicago. It seems Julie is the star there, and she or he abruptly quits to make room for Magnolia. Magnolia then turns into a star, as if to embody the concept of Black tradition being taken up (or taken over) by white entertainers, which is what occurred with widespread music within the early twentieth century and continues to at the present time.
Kern signified the seriousness of this material with a grand, dramatic A-minor chord within the Overture. Much more of a jolt, within the unique Broadway run, was Hammerstein’s lyric for the opening refrain, during which audiences heard Black singers determine themselves with essentially the most extreme racial epithet. (In revivals, that phrase was modified to “darkies,” “coloured folks” and, benignly, “all of us.”)
Though there are offensive tropes in “Present Boat,” Hammerstein’s perspective was extra nuanced, and progressive. The musical additionally incorporates advocacy on behalf of Queenie, for instance, who’s given a scene during which she is made to undergo, with seasoned cool, the indignity of a white man questioning the place she acquired a brooch that Julie gave to her. And the musical’s greatest hit, “Ol’ Man River,” is reserved for Joe, the opposite principal Black character.
