My review of the pizzazzy Show Boat at Goodspeed Opera House will be posted any day now, but let’s get the sideshow out of the way first.
For atmospheric accoutrements, no theater in the state beats the Goodspeed. This current show is Show Boat, so already the elegant old Opera House ties-in aesthetically without even trying—the whole place overlooks the beautiful Connecticut River. (Not the Missippi, but it’ll do.)
Indoors, at the ground-floor bar, the Goodspeed is offering drinks dubbed “The Mighty Mississippi” (mint julep, bourbon & mint) and The Cotton Blossom (gin and orange juice). The kiddie cocktails have been renamed Cap’n Andy and his daughter Magnolia (Shirley Temple never performed on a show boat, did she?).
In the upstairs auditorium, the ushers wear straw hats, as they might have in the late-19th century era of Southern riverboats. For the previous Goodspeed show, the Gershwin-studded tap musical My One and Only, the ushers put on top hats. Will they don fedoras, I asked our usher, for the next show, the noir pastiche City of Angels? She was mysterious about it, or perhaps she just didn’t know.
One connection I was surprised not to see more prominently proclaimed regarding the Goodspeed’s Show Boat: Norma Terris, the actress whose very name festoons Goodspeed Musical’s other performance space, the Norma Terris Theatre in Chester, originated the role of Magnolia in Show Boat’s groundbreaking (uh, waterbreaking?) Broadway production of 1927.
Can’t help lovin’ her.