‘Fish got to swim and birds got to fly’: the story of Show Boat

Event type: Monthly meeting
Date: Mon 9 Oct 2023
Time: 10:00am
Venue: St Margaret’s United Reformed Church, N3 1BD
From the original publicity

The 1927 musical ‘Show Boat’, with music by Jerome Kern and lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II, was based on Edna Ferber’s best-selling novel and covered social issues that were ground-breaking for American musical theatre. It follows the lives of performers, stagehands and dock workers on the Cotton Blossom, a Mississippi river show boat, from 1887 to 1927.

In this talk, Stewart Maugham explores the work and personalities of the creators and performers who made this classic musical, and illustrates the talk with anecdotes, pictures, videos and some of the original musical recordings. (Stewart first gave this talk to the American History group at NLU3A.)