As the eponymous couple comes together for “Bess, You Is My Woman Now,” we realize that there has been no development between them yet. The fact of their relationship has been established, but none of it has been shown. This is the moment to make us hear and see, believe and care. Robinson’s staging idea here is inexplicable. Porgy stands at the door of his room while Bess takes center stage and sings to us. Then he goes and stands next to her, and they both sing to us. No current runs between them, no intimacy or tenderness or sense of unfulfilled souls finding each other is conveyed, by either voice or action. It’s as if the director had concluded that closeness would only make his charges uncomfortable, and that nothing was going to happen between them, anyway. So nothing did, either here or in “I Loves You, Porgy,” with its potentially searing inner conflict for Bess, and Porgy’s realization that he must get rid of Crown. Back to Nina Simone.

Two more staging choices get in our way before the story reaches its end. One is the Porgy/Crown fight. Let me share what the text specifies. Crown, who has survived his final bout with God in the storm, enters the deserted courtyard and crawls toward Porgy’s door, we assume for a final reckoning. But the shutter above him opens, and Porgy’s arm descends, plunging a knife into Crown’s back. Then Porgy clutches Crown’s throat with the grip that Sportin’ Life has told us about, no doubt owing to the great upper-body strength that some cripples cultivate for self-defense. Porgy kills Crown; knife and body are flung out into the courtyard, and Porgy exults “Bess, you got a man now, you got Porgy!” But remember, we mustn’t pity Porgy, and as we now see, we mustn’t think of him as a stealth killer, either. So Robinson stages the episode as a mano à mano fight, in which the standup guy with the bum leg and the crutch wins, fair and square, against the previously undefeated champ. And he couldn’t go to the picnic? It’s preposterous.

The handling of Sportin’ Life’s final triumph is less egregious—just a weaker choice than the script’s, I think. After “There’s a Boat That’s Leavin’ Soon for New York,” Sportin’ Life offers Bess a second shot of dope. But she knocks it from his hand and runs inside her door. In the script, Sportin’ Life just lays the paper with the dope on the doorstep, and saunters off while the orchestra slams out a brassy reprise of the Boat Song theme. I’ve seen it done with Bess opening the door and picking up the shot. But the strongest end to the scene is the script’s: Sportin’ Life exits, the door stays closed, the orchestra plays. Curtain. We get what’s going to happen because the music tells us, and it gives us a chill. Robinson, though, uses the music to show us Sportin’ Life luring Bess off with the dope, the least suspenseful and suggestive of the possibilities.