Review: 'Show Boat' kicks off summer program

By John Horan Jr. -- jhoran@nvdaily.com

WINCHESTER -- With its opulent, gloriously sung "Show Boat," the Shenandoah Summer Music Theatre celebrates the musical that started it all.

Pre-"Show Boat," Broadway musicals were mostly either operettas or fluffy escapism, heavy on songs and dance routines and light on plot and credible characters. But with a sprawling story that dared to touch on miscegenation and failed marriage and music that sprouted naturally from the plot, "Show Boat" transformed the genre, paving the way for the more mature musicals that have followed.

"Show Boat" boasts a cavalcade of songs -- many of them standards -- by Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II, but, requiring a cast of nearly 40 and spanning 40 years, it also is daunting. But the Shenandoah cast, directed by Harold Herman, is equal to the task. The singing is exemplary, the acting believable and the choreography, by Robyn Hart Schroth, diverting.

More than 80 years past its premiere, the show, though, has assumed a certain museum-like aura, which Herman and Co. work to circumvent. They are generally successful although the latter scenes, which follow the characters to Chicago in the early 20th century, have a perfunctory feel.

Based on an Edna Ferber novel, "Show Boat" traces the lives of a family that operates a music hall on its paddlewheel Mississippi River boat from the post-Reconstruction era to the jazz age. Their daughter's troubled marriage to the gambler Gaylord Ravenal is the main plot, but subplots involve Julie, the mulatto singer who is banished from the boat and sinks into alcoholism, and Joe, the black stevedore whose mournful "Ol' Man River" embodies his race's downtrodden plight.

Trish Epperson is a winning Magnolia, who matures convincingly from the callow teen elated in love to the downhearted older woman forced to fend for herself as a nervous nightclub singer.

Her shimmering lyric soprano blends easily with the gleaming tenor of Alan M-L Wager, although his Ravenal would benefit from a stronger dose of rascality.

As the ex-slave Joe, Colin Porter displays a sonorous bass and adept acting. Gaylan Castillo, as his wife Queenie, is equally gifted, leading a chorus of blacks in the chromatic chorale "Misery."

Sarah Sesler, as the mulatto Julie, revels in the glorious "Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man" and later tugs at heartstrings with her melancholy rendition of "Bill." Michael Misko is affective as her devoted husband.

John Baker is the affable Cap'n Andy and Ilona Dulaski his grumpy wife.

Matthew Gose and Robin Higginbotham are the vibrant song-and-dance team whose show-bizz success contrasts with the dashed dreams of the other main players.

Christie Farrell caps the show as the grown-up Kim, who finds the success that eluded her parents.

William Pierson's handsome set is dominated by the two-story paddle boat, which glides onto the stage, tastefully lighted by Wm. McConnell Bozman. Cheryl Yancey provides the plethora of costumes that span the eras.