Word: plot
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...musical and dramatic effect, lavishly constructed by set designer Eugene Lee and cogently if somewhat briskly conducted by Jeffrey Huard, this Show Boat is a near perfect staging of the work that had announced to the world the maturity of American musical theater. The alleged racial bias in the plot, which occasioned protests during the tryout of the Toronto production last year, is nowhere to be found here. To see Show Boat is to experience how potent the Broadway ideal can be in the hands of a master like Prince...
With the introduction of more integral characters, most notably John Huston as Evelyn Mulwray's father, the plot keeps thickening before the actual climax, but surprisingly little action takes place in Chinatown. Even when it does, the location seems an afterthought in allegiance to the title. Rather, the name is most likely supposed to evoke the sense of mystery and otherworldliness embodied in the district. Perhaps if the plot did not twist around on itself so intricately, an abstract title would have worked...
...performers America has to offer if they ever wish they could cut out drama from musical theater altogether. I think I saw some pretty great talent on the stage of Schlemiel the First last night, but I cannot be sure because all their greatness was scattered amidst the feeble plot threads they were forced to drag along behind them...
...Yiddish language, and her flexible face will always tell you what she's (not) thinking even if her words do not. In other words, she knows how to put on a show; it has little to do with drama, at least the type proffered by the distracting plot of this piece...
Although somewhat absurd I will try to delineate a plot to this musical. A beadle known as a schlemiel to everyone (including and especially his wife) gets assigned missionary duties by the village wisemen (read: idiots) only to lose his way and assume another identity. For reasons unexplained and unimportant everything somehow, oddly works out for the better, I think. The end. Cut back to the music; enter Sokol, Airaldi, Levin etal...