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The following year, Peluso starred in the 2016 West End revival of “Show Boat,” a musical he had connected with — particularly its song “Ol’ Man River” — when he was a young actor.

But the production is an endearing party, one that extends outside during the first intermission to a pond near the festival theater, for a gleefully messy, proudly queer, highly eclectic performance ranging among the likes of “I Am What I Am,” “Part of Your World” and “Ol’ Man River.”

It heralds “Ol’ Man River’s” heartbreak, the way enough time in Hollywood domesticates even the freest spirit into commercial relatability.

He is Ol’ Man River Goes to Hollywood, a pulp fiction I unpack again and again until I can comprehend the lucid delirium he must have endured to live through those two opposing circumstances.

He upholds a sense of dignity about working the fields, but no sense of disdain for his Ol’ Man River, who exposes how absurd it is to be exploited, and promises a future abdication of all that.