Show/Boat: A River is a radical new imagining of the original classic from 1927. Target Margin Theater’s method of reconceptualizing theater classics for today is especially powerful in this adaptation, reflecting on the original’s historical contexts around race, class, labor and capitalism in America – as well as its legacy of breaking new ground: the original Show Boat was performed by the first racially integrated cast on Broadway, in a “musical play” that foregrounded racist violence and interracial relationships in early 20th century America, through the medium of a love story.
Show/Boat guides us to confront our past histories and use them to build something new, while vibrantly honoring the show’s legacy of theatricality and song.
Office Hours
Get Into It
Show/Boat: A River
Laurence Maslon on Show/Boat: A River
Show Boat was the most advanced and adventurous musical of its day by a nautical mile.
Get Thee to the LIbrary
Recommended readings to get you in gear for the show.
Todd Decker, Show Boat: Performing Race in an American Musical (2013)
Edna Ferber, Show Boat (1926)
Laurence Maslon (editor), American Musicals, 1927-1949: The Complete Books & Lyrics of Eight Broadway Classics (2014)
J. E. Smyth, Edna Ferber’s Hollywood: American Fictions of Gender, Race and History (2021)
Winer, Laurie Winer, Oscar Hammerstein II and the Invention of the Musical (2023)
Read All About It
Brooklyn Rail | May 2018
The Rooted Adventure of Target Margin: 1001 Nights in Sunset Park
The Target Margin mission includes the promise that the company will “aggressively cast and staff [its] work with the broadest range of people. That means racial diversity has been a guiding principle from the start.”
Huffpost | April 2017
A Family, Our Country, the Theatre: An Interview with David Herskovits
“Memory particularly has been the engine of a lot of my interest and my work in the theatre for some years now.”
"Show Boat" in the Archives of the NYT
December 1927
SHOW BOAT' PROVES FINE MUSICAL SHOW
“Play is Staged Lavishly, Story Adheres Closely to the Edna Ferber Novel of Floating Mississippi Theatre.”
May 1936
THE SCREEN; A Bravo for Universal's Splendid Film Edition of 'Show Boat'
“We have reason to be grateful to Hollywood this morning, for it has restored to us Edna Ferber’s Mississippi River classic, Show Boat.”
October 1994
REVIEW: Classic Musical With a Change in Focus
“Anyone looking for pure escapism had better look elsewhere; this Show Boat rides a river of deep disillusionment.”
Extra Credit
Even if you’ve never seen Show Boat, you’ve almost certainly heard a rendition of at least one of its songs – does the lyric “fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly” ring any bells?
“Can’t Help Lovin’ That Man” has transcended the musical and become an enduring torch song. Here’s a rendition from Lena Horne, performing on the Ed Sullivan Show; she had performed the song as part of a show-within-the-show Show Boat production in the movie musical, Til The Clouds Roll By – a fictionalized biography of Show Boat’s composer Jerome Kern. Billie Holiday, Barbara Streisand, Ella Fitzgerald, Judy Garland (AND Liza Minelli), Ava Gardner, Julie London, Natalie Cole, Annie Lennox – name a torch singer and odds are they’ve carried this one.