SHOW BOAT Will Come to NYU Skirball in 2025

The Obie Award-winning Target Margin Theater and NYU Skirball will present a new production of the groundbreaking musical Show Boat in the Spring of 2025. Directed by Target Margin Theater’s Founding Artistic Director David Herskovits, the revival uses the original 1927 book and score by Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II. Herskovits vision for this quintessential American masterpiece builds on Target Margin’s critically acclaimed history of examining and re-inventing classical works such as Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus, DuBose Heyward's Mamba’s Daughters, Goethe’s Faust, and Eugene O'Neill's Mourning Becomes Electra, to name a few. On the cusp of Show Boat's centennial, this new staging showcases Target Margin’s signature extravagant theatricality, dense layering of design elements, and detailed celebration of language, song, and spirit.

David Herskovits said, “Show Boat is famously unresolved; it has been endlessly reworked, cut, emended, added to, and rearranged. Its gorgeous songs pulse through a chaotic story that is a back-stage romance, a fantasia of troubling racial tropes, and a history of the dawn of the American century. Above all, Show Boat is a call to all of us to reconsider who we are as a nation and as human beings.”

Jay Wegman, Executive Director of NYU Skirball, said, “I love musicals and Show Boat is definitely a cornerstone of the American Musical Theatre tradition. It’s marvelous that Target Margin will revisit, revise, and reinvent this classic through the lens of the company’s singular theatricality. NYU Skirball’s audiences are in for a total thrill ride.”

Show Boat forever changed the face of American theater. The first show of its kind, Show Boat presented complex characters grappling with timely, realistic themes woven into a substantial plot. Spanning the years from 1880 to 1927, the epic narrative concerns the lives, loves and heartbreaks of three generations of show folk and their lifelong friends on the Mississippi, in Chicago and on Broadway.

Based on the novel by Edna Ferber, Show Boat, with music by Jerome Kern and book and lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II, opened on Broadway at the Ziegfeld Theatre on December 27, 1927. The show was a great critical and popular success, running for a total of 572 performances. After its initial run, Show Boat returned to Broadway no less than six times: in 1932 and 1946 at the Ziegfeld Theatre; in 1948 and 1954 at New York City Center; in 1983 at the Uris (Gershwin) Theatre; and in 1994, again at the Gershwin, under the direction of Harold Prince. Prince’s 1994 production earned Show Boat its longest Broadway run with 947 performances.

Additional information including details on casting, creative team, and the performance schedule will be announced later.