Initial casting has been revealed for Target Margin Theater and NYU Skirball's upcoming Show/Boat: A River, a reexamination of Oscar Hammerstein II and Jerome Kern's seminal 1927 musical Show Boat. Part of the 2025 Under the Radar Festival, the production will perform January 9-26, 2025 at NYU Skirball, with opening night set for January 15. Target Margin Founding Artistic Director David Herskovits is directing.
The new take on the show will feature an ensemble cast of 10, each playing multiple roles. That company will include Alvin Crawford, Caitlin Nasema Cassidy, Suzanne Darrell, Edwin Joseph, J Molière, Steven Rattazzi, Rebbekah Vega-Romero, and Stephanie Weeks, with additional casting to be announced.
“As with all Target Margin shows over the past 34 years, Show/Boat: A River is a true, ensemble-driven production," says Herskovits in a statement. "We are not simply staging a 100-year-old classic, but recreating Show Boat, a famously unresolved work, for today's audiences with a slew of contemporary considerations, especially when it comes to casting. While certain key roles will have dedicated performers, everyone in the ensemble will take on different moments, songs, text and then let them go, sometimes very rapidly. Words and music will be shared fluildly in this process. I believe this approach allows us to truly reconsider who we are as a nation and as human beings.”
As previously announced, Herskovits' creative team will include co-music director and vocal arranger Dionne McClain-Freeney, co-music director and orchestrator Dan Schlosberg, choreographer Caroline Fermin, scenic designer Kaye Voce, costume designer Dina El-Aziz, lighting designer Cha See, and production stage manager Ryan Gohsman.
The musical, the original version of which premiered in 1927 and entered into public domain in 2023, features a book and lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II and a score by Jerome Kern. The story, adapted from Edna Ferber's novel of the same, is a sprawling one spanning decades as it follows a troupe of performers on a show boat in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Its beloved score ("Ol' Man River," "Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man," "Why Do I Love You?," and "Bill" are all part of its song list) helped make the show a massive and enduring hit, but the show is also noted for creating the earliest form of what we now call musical theatre. Tackling serious subjects like racism, abuse, and addiction, Show Boat was far more focused on storytelling than the musicals of its day, managing to authentically tell a serious story while also being straightforwardly entertaining. Hammerstein would continue his work refining and defining the form when he began collaborating with composer Richard Rodgers in 1943.
But Show Boat has also always been historically tricky. Though staged often, the show's script and score have been revised nearly endlessly throughout its life, with changes made to address everything from performance practices typical to 1927 that would confound and bore audiences today to the removal of some unsavory and offensive material in the original version. Most infamously, the opening featured a chorus of Black workers singing the n-word, a blemish on Show Boat's history that was thankfully short-lived; the word was removed for the musical's London debut the following year.
READ: If You've Ever Wanted to Rewrite Show Boat, Now's Your Chance
As of 2023, the original 1927 version of Show Boat is no longer protected by copyright, opening up the opportunity for this upcoming new production to reinterpret that version of the show. Target Margin has a long history of re-examining and reinventing classic works, including Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus, DuBose Heyward's Mamba's Daughters, Goethe's Faust, and Eugene O'Neill's Mourning Becomes Electra.
In the years since its premiere, Show Boat has returned to Broadway six times, most recently in a 1994 revival directed and heavily revised by Harold Prince. The work was also adapted for the big screen twice, in 1936 and 1951.
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