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Show Boat est considéré comme le tournant majeur à Broadway qui a vu le théâtre musical devenir adulte et ouvert la voie à George Gershwin, Cole Porter, Richard Rodgers, Stephen Sondheim, etc. Tous les compositeurs de Broadway ont avoué que Jerome Kern était à la fois leur père spirituel en tant que musicien, et le père fondateur du théâtre musical tel que nous le connaissons encore aujourd'hui.
Show Boat has been seen on multiple occasions in London's West End. The original London production opened May 3, 1928 at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane and featured among the cast, Edith Day as Magnolia, Paul Robeson as Joe, and Alberta Hunter as Queenie. Mabel Mercer, later famed as a cabaret singer, was in the chorus.
Other West End presentations include a July 1971 production at the Adelphi Theatre, which ran for 909 performances.
The Hal Prince production ran at the Prince Edward Theatre from April 1998 to September 1998, and was nominated for the Olivier Award, Outstanding Musical Production (1999).
Other notable revivals in England have been the joint Opera North/Royal Shakespeare Company production of 1989, which ran at the London Palladium in 1990, and the June 2006 production directed by Francesca Zambello, conducted by David Charles Abell and presented by Raymond Gubbay at London's Royal Albert Hall – the first fully staged musical production in the history of that venue.