Few musicals have as much to say, and as much that could be said about them, as “Show Boat.”

First performed in 1927, Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II’s work is a pioneering tale of romance, race and American culture at a turning point. Somewhere between operetta and popular entertainment, it helped to make musical theater a serious art form, weaving drama and song in a way that Hammerstein would carry on and master with Richard Rodgers in shows like “Oklahoma!” and “Carousel.” And it did so while breaking barriers not only of form, but also of social convention.

Still, “Show Boat” traded in blackface performance and other types of casual racism that have long been discomfiting, and a source of controversy. This can be difficult to reconcile with the progress for Black artists that the musical provided, and with the idea it offered audiences: Its story, spanning several decades from the Reconstruction-era South to the rapidly modernizing North, was told through music, quietly arguing along the way that the history of American music was the history of America itself.

These complications are just a few reasons that “Show Boat” has endured. It was quickly revived after its first run, adapted into multiple films, and has appeared on New York and global stages every decade since. The latest revival, by Target Margin Theater, called “Show/Boat: A River,” begins performances on Thursday at NYU Skirball, in partnership with the Under the Radar festival.

As the title suggests, this will not be an old-fashioned “Show Boat.” While retaining the skeleton of the original musical at a smaller scale, “Show/Boat: A River” aims to reimagine it for the here and now.

In a way, there could be no more traditional way to approach “Show Boat,” which has been “reimagined” in pretty much every iteration since it opened on Broadway. If “Show Boat” is, as Rodgers described it, “the first truly American theater music,” it is also the most unstable musical. Some changes over the years have been dramaturgical, and some political, but all have been motivated by the belief that “Show Boat” is worth reviving not just for some good tunes, but because it has always, and may always, have something important to say.