Show Boat is a musical play with book and lyrics by Oscar
Hammerstein II, based on Edna Ferber's best-selling novel of the same name. The
musical follows the lives of the performers, stagehands, and dock workers on
the Cotton Blossom, a Mississippi River show boat, over 40 years from
1887 to 1927. Its themes include racial prejudice and tragic, enduring love.
The musical contributed such classic songs as "Ol' Man River",
"Make Believe", and "Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man". The
premiere of Show Boat on Broadway was an important event in the history
of American musical theatre. It "was a radical departure in musical
storytelling, marrying spectacle with seriousness", compared with the
trivial and unrealistic operettas, light musical comedies and
"Follies"-type musical revues that defined Broadway in the 1890s and
early 20th century.
Act I
In 1887, the show
boat Cotton Blossom arrives at the river dock in Natchez, Mississippi.
The Reconstruction era had ended a decade earlier, and white-dominated Southern
legislatures have imposed racial segregation and Jim Crow rules. The boat's
owner, Cap'n Andy Hawks, introduces his actors to the crowd on the levee. A
fistfight breaks out between Steve Baker, the leading man of the troupe, and
Pete, a rough engineer who had been making passes at Steve's wife, the leading
lady Julie La Verne, a mixed-race woman who passes as white. Steve knocks Pete
down, and Pete swears revenge, suggesting he knows a dark secret about Julie.
Cap'n Andy pretends to the shocked crowd that the fight was a preview of one of
the melodramas to be performed. The troupe exits with the showboat band, and
the crowd follows.
A handsome
riverboat gambler, Gaylord Ravenal, appears on the levee and is taken with
eighteen-year-old Magnolia ("Nolie") Hawks, an aspiring performer and
the daughter of Cap'n Andy and his wife Parthenia Ann (Parthy). Magnolia is
likewise smitten with Ravenal ("Make Believe"). She seeks advice from
Joe, a black dock worker aboard the boat, who has returned from buying flour
for his wife Queenie, the ship's cook. He replies that there are "lots
like [Ravenal] on the river." As Magnolia goes inside the boat to tell her
friend Julie about the handsome stranger, Joe mutters that she ought to ask the
river for advice. He and the other dock workers reflect on the wisdom and
indifference of "Ol' Man River", who does not seem to care what the
world's troubles are, but "jes' keeps rollin' along".
Magnolia finds
Julie inside and announces that she is in love. Julie cautions her that this
stranger could be just a "no-account river fellow". Magnolia says
that if she found out he was "no-account", she would stop loving him.
Julie warns her that it is not that easy to stop loving someone, explaining
that she will always love Steve, singing a few lines of "Can't Help Lovin'
Dat Man". Queenie overhears – she is surprised that Julie knows that song
as she has only heard "colored folks" sing it. Magnolia remarks that
Julie sings it all the time, and when Queenie asks if she can sing the entire
song, Julie obliges.
During the
rehearsal for that evening, Julie and Steve learn that the town sheriff is
coming to arrest them. Steve takes out a large pocket knife and makes a cut on
the back of her hand, sucking the blood and swallowing it. Pete returns with
the sheriff, who insists that the show cannot proceed, because Julie is a
mulatto woman married to a white man, and local laws prohibit such
miscegenation. Julie admits that her mother was black, but Steve tells the
sheriff that he also has "black blood" in him, so their marriage is
legal in Mississippi. The troupe backs him up, boosted by the ship's pilot
Windy McClain, a longtime friend of the sheriff. The couple have escaped the
charge of miscegenation, but they still have to leave the show boat; identified
as black, they can no longer perform for the segregated white audience. Cap'n
Andy fires Pete, but in spite of his sympathy for Julie and Steve, he cannot
violate the law for them.
Gaylord Ravenal
returns and asks for passage on the boat. Andy hires him as the new leading
man, and assigns his daughter Magnolia as the new leading lady, over her
mother's objections. As Magnolia and Ravenal begin to rehearse their roles and
in the process, kiss for the first time (infuriating Parthy), Joe reprises the
last few lines of "Ol' Man River".
Weeks later,
Magnolia and Ravenal have been a hit with the crowds and have fallen in love.
As the levee workers hum "Ol' Man River" in the background, he
proposes to Magnolia, and she accepts. The couple joyously sings "You Are
Love". They make plans to marry the next day while Parthy, who
disapproves, is out of town. Parthy has discovered that Ravenal once killed a
man, and arrives with the Sheriff to interrupt the wedding festivities. The
group learns that Ravenal was acquitted of murder. Cap'n Andy calls Parthy
"narrow-minded" and defends Ravenal by announcing that he also once
killed a man. Parthy faints, but the ceremony proceeds.
Act II
Six years have
passed, and it is 1893. Gaylord and Magnolia have moved to Chicago, where they
make a precarious living from Gaylord's gambling. At first they are rich and enjoying
the good life, singing the song "Why Do I Love You?" By 1903, they
have a daughter, Kim, and after years of varying income, they are broke and
rent a room in a boarding house. Depressed over his inability to support his
family, Gaylord abandons Magnolia and Kim. Frank and Ellie, two former actors
from the showboat, learn that Magnolia is living in the rooms they want to
rent. The old friends seek a singing job for Magnolia at the Trocadero, the
club where they are doing a New Year's show. Julie is working there. She has
fallen into drinking after having been abandoned by Steve. At a rehearsal, she
tries out the new song "Bill." She appears to be thinking of Steve
and sings it with great emotion. From her dressing-room, she hears Magnolia singing
"Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man" for her audition, the song which Julie
taught her years ago. Julie secretly quits her job so that Magnolia can fill
it, without learning of her sacrifice.
On New Year's
Eve, Andy and Parthy go to Chicago for a surprise visit to their daughter
Magnolia. He goes to the Trocadero without his wife, and sees Magnolia overcome
with emotion and nearly booed off stage. Andy rallies the crowd by starting a
sing-along of the standard, "After the Ball". Magnolia becomes a
great musical star.
More than 20
years pass, and it is 1927. An aged Joe on the Cotton Blossom sings a
reprise of "Ol' Man River". Cap'n Andy has a chance meeting with
Ravenal and arranges his reunion with Magnolia. Andy knows that Magnolia is
retiring and returning to the Cotton Blossom with Kim, who has become a
Broadway star. Kim gives her admirers a taste of her performing abilities by
singing an updated, Charleston version of "Why Do I Love You?"
Ravenal sings a reprise of "You Are Love" to the offstage Magnolia.
Although he is uncertain about asking her to take him back, Magnolia, who has
never stopped loving him, greets him warmly and does. As the happy couple walks
up the boat's gangplank, Joe and the cast sing the last verse of "Ol' Man
River".
