The star of Show Boat is, surely, the Mississippi river, its rolling presence famously extolled in one of the 1927 musical’s hit numbers: Ol’ Man River. Written for Paul Robeson and sung by him in the 1936 film, it has been identified with that great American ever since. Here, Emmanuel Kojo makes the song his own. In a direct and tightly focused performance of seeming ease, he channels a voice of rib-vibrating depth and silk-smooth roundness to feel as unforcedly natural as slow water surging powerfully towards the ocean.
Jerome Kern (musically directed by David White) weaves theme tunes through his score like a current, carrying the fortunes of the Show Boat people through Kentucky, Illinois and Missouri, all the way to Chicago and back, over four decades from the mid-1880s. Sometimes Oscar Hammerstein II’s lyrics surface; sometimes instrumental only, they sound in the audiences’ imaginations.
Director Daniel Evans builds on this impression of currents flowing. He swirls his cast around the wharf planks separating thrust stage from auditorium, he eddies them up and down the iron stairs from the light-bedecked boat’s bridge, to deck, to backstage or galley – Lez Brotherston’s layered set making all things possible and Alistair David’s choreography taking full advantage. Often, one character stands still on the edge of the surge, watching – the fixed point that gives the movement force.
The effect is to emphasise the sense that the particulars of this very American story are universal – tales of love and loss; of friendship and oppression. Performances of exceptional quality, each one true to the self that it must be, underscore a theme within Edna Ferber’s novel (the musical’s source): people are equal; their circumstances are not.
Equal as are all in the 24-strong ensemble, space constraints mean I can single out but a few. Among the lovers: Michael Xavier’s Gaylord, so dashing, so chastened, perfectly counterbalanced by Gina Beck’s strong, true-loving Magnolia; Kojo’s unapologetic Joe laughed at and railed at by Sandra Marvin’s self-strong Queenie; Rebecca Trehearn as Julie, simultaneously broken and sustained by love.
