The Boat Has Sailed

Here's another one: Show Boat. What is the appeal? Paul Robeson is dead, so no one will ever be able to pull off Old Man River like that again. Are you hoping that by doing the show often enough, you'll cause the dead to rise and be able to see zombie Paul Robeson sing the song live? Because I don't know that there's much chance of it.

It's like South Pacific: the music is so-so, the story is terrible, and the message is a hammer. Can you beat it into us any more? I don't happen to think so, but I guess there are people who still do.

It was groundbreaking when it came out, I guess. But Hell, the fact that the Paul Robeson character wasn't called Ol' Negro Tarbaby and wasn't played by a white actor in shoe polish was pretty groundbreaking, and I'm not sure the world is still at that level of non-ground-brokenness. Black people do occasionally appear on stage, in movies, and on TV, and many of them are given speaking parts (see my bit about sarcasm).

I agree that race relations have a long way to go in this and every country. But there are better plays out there to tackle this problem. For instance, not only have black people been allowed to appear on stage, but they've been taught to write by crazy liberals, and now they write plays too. That came as a tremendous shock to me, I don't mind telling you. I thought that black people had to be given a voice by white people who know better (see my bit about sarcasm if you're interested in writing caustic comments).

So why don't we perform new works with arguably better quality written by people who actually experienced the problems they write about firsthand? Because Americans are shackled to the wheel of classic musicals, and when we break free of that, we're still shackled to the wheel of terrible musicals.

So I missed this boat too. Me and Paul, standing on the shore, watching the steamboat float away. If I could sing basso profundo, I'd make a go of a duet.