Show Boat is a 1927 Musical in Two Acts, with Music by Jerome Kern and Book and Lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II. Based on Edna Ferber's bestselling Novel of the same name, the Musical follows the lives of the performers, stagehands and dock workers on the Cotton Blossom, a Mississippi River Showboat, over forty years ago, from 1887 to 1927.
The arrival of Show Boat on Broadway was a watershed moment in the history of American Musicals. Compared to the trival and unrealistic Operettas, Light Musical Comedies and "Follies"-type Musical Revues that defined Broadway in the 1890s and early 20th Centry, "Show Boat" was a radical departure in Musical Storytelling, marrying spectacle with Seriousness.