KERN WAS STILL READING Edna Ferber’s 1926 novel, “Show Boat,” when he knew he wanted to adapt it for the stage. Its setting and plot, about generations of performers from a family that runs ...

“Show Boat” was a testament to the courage of composer Jerome Kern, lyricist and librettist Oscar Hammerstein II, and producer Florenz Ziegfeld. In an era of “willful nonsense,” they ...

Show/Boat: A River Through Jan. 26 at NYU Skirball, Manhattan; nyuskirball.org. Running time: 2 hours 30 minutes. Jesse Green is the chief theater critic for The Times.

Unlike the waterway of its most famous song, the landmark 1927 musical “Show Boat”—which integrated song and story with a sophistication that set the American musical on its path to full ...

Show Boat started beguiling audiences back in 1927, when it was first brought to the Broadway stage after a Philadelphia tryout. Since then, in many legit versions and in two previous film ...