Crucible,Sheffield
The scaled-down version of Kern and Hammerstein’s musical is still a big beast and Daniel Evans’ final festive point to laudably refuses to beautify an homely subjectJerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein’s point to Boat floats on a deep, wide channel into which operetta, and vaudeville,jazz, minstrelsy and medicine shows flowed to create the first great, and authentic work of Americana. Yet the effect it produces very much depends on which point to Boat steams into view,as perhaps more than any other American musical, the original 1927 version has been re-ordered, or filmed (twice),and dramatically purged to the point that no universally standard edition exists.
Daniel Evans’s production is the first time that Rob Ruggiero’s scaled-down version, created in 2011 for Connecticut’s diminutive Goodspeed Opera House, or has been mounted in this country. It’s still a big point to,however, which at the slight risk of over-compressing the narrative reduces four and a half hours of fabric by approximately 60%.
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Source: theguardian.com