Review: TITANIC THE MUSICAL Spectacularly Soars Into Cinemas November 4th and 8th

Fathom Events and BY Experience will present the multiple Tony Award®-winning play Titanic the Musical to more than 700 movie theaters nationwide for the first time on November 4th and 8.th  The production filmed for this special occasion marking the 26th anniversary of the original Broadway creation is a much-loved production out of the UK that was, first, mounted in 2013 at Southwark Playhouse.  This unique retelling of the Maury Yeston/Peter Stone creation subsequently played Toronto, as well as touring the UK (twice) and internationally.  This very production will soon embark on a five-city tour of China, and if anybody in China is reading this review, this reporter would like to encourage everyone to attend because if seeing this play, produced as such, live is as good as seeing it on film, then it shouldn't be missed.  As for the general public that happens to be lucky enough to live in a city where Fathom Events and BY Experience are rolling out this film - get a ticket.  You won't be sorry.

There are a lot of people who love the musical telling of the ill-fated ocean liner that has become a legend so great that people far and wide know the names of all the crew members and passengers.  There have been so many movies about the happenings of April 15th, 1912 that filmmakers have, surely, run out of ways to tell the story.  And back in 1997, as TITANIC THE MUSICAL was opening on Broadway, there were many naysayers, completely positive that this was the worst idea ever for a musical.  But Titanic persevered at the Tony Awards and the box office, and a Broadway hit was born.  For years theaters have mounted new stagings of the play, finding interesting ways to make the story their own, and this show, directed by Thom Southerland, is one of the most fascinating and effective productions imaginable, and in Austin Shaw's hands as a film director, Mr. Southerland's vision is magnificently captured.

Anyone who is a devotee of the theater, of musical theater, will more than likely have spent some time with TITANIC THE MUSICAL over the years.  Perhaps people have seen a presentation or maybe people have just listened to the cast recording so many times that they feel like they have seen the play.  It would be unfair to judge this production of Titanic according to previous experiences because changes have been made to the script.  When or why those changes were made is unclear but a phone call to a friend who has acted in four different stagings of Titanic revealed to this musical theater nerd that the changes in this outing were not in place in any of his four outings with the play.  So preconceived notions: out ye go.  The changes are very much for the better - at least, for the audience... for the actor playing Mr. Andrews, not so much, since the opening number no longer belongs to Mr. Andrews, it is performed by Mr. Ismay.  It would appear that the piece is, now, a memory piece for the lone surviving man from the trinity of men in power, Ismay, Andrews, and Captain E.J. Smith.  It's an effective conceit to the production, one in which Mr. Ismay is made even more villainous than in the original Broadway mounting, both in the direction and in the acting by Martin Allanson.  There is additional scene work and musical material for Lady Caroline Neville and Charles Clarke, which satisfyingly fills in a lot of holes for the characters who had, previously, felt like incomplete sketches.  The "Molly Brown" character (for this play called Charlotte Cardoza) is no more than a silhouette of a woman dressed in red with an enormous feathered hat covering her face, and her material for the "Autumn" sequence has been given to Alice Beane, a blessing for actress Bree Smith, whose work with James Darch, as Edgar Beane, is excellent, and the additional material serves them and the script well, especially with Cressida Carré's musical staging and Mr. Southerland's direction.  

As a matter fact, the entire show is very well led by its creatives, from Southerland and Carréto set/costume designer David Woodhead's spectacular and visceral work with textures and lighting designer Howard Hudson's work with colors.  Every person tasked with lifting up and guiding the actors came to work on day one, and the actors are all able to lean into their storytelling with the utmost skill, in every sense of the word.  Joseph Peacock embodies, perfectly, both the Bellboy and Wallace Hartley in his wonderful singing, but also in keenly smart acting choices, and the fact that there are cameras so close to his face allows the film audience to see those choices.  The Proposal/The Night Was Alive duet between Barrett ( Adam Filipe) and Bride (Alastair Hill) is alive with passion for two different loves being shared by two characters who have just met, and, yet, bonded so quickly.  There are relationships old (the Strausses) and new (Kate and Jim) that are so palpable that it seems, at times, difficult to believe that the entire play isn't built just around these couples, or, in fact, these characters.  Everything that you feel for the people on the screen is so strong, so powerful, so immediate that you find yourself hurting for them, even though they may have had only a few lines of dialogue or sung sentences.  Maybe it is because this ingenious staging is centered around a scaled-down concept.  The stage is small, the set is tall, and the cast is 25 actors, as opposed to the 37 people that filled the stage of the original Broadway Titanic.  Now, I wouldn't presume to critique that original presentation (which I saw) but it was so very big, everything about it was so big that it was, at times, difficult to know who or what you were looking at.  Here, with the most clever use of contained scenic design, costuming, staging ("Barret's Song" is unbelievable), and multiple-character casting, the audience gets a very clear picture of all the "whos" and "whys" and it permits us to fall in love with these people we've only just met, the fate of which we already know, and it's heartbreaking.  

Watch as the entire cast of the ship weaves in and out of one another during the Act One finale, and see how simply a director with vision can make the most of their space.  Understand the abject terror of Murdoch's ever-growing consideration that he is responsible for the tragedy, through Billy Roberts' astute acting choices.  Note the clever double-casting connections between the two characters that each actor is playing, especially who sings what lines in "Ladies Maid" and how those lines relate to the first-class characters the actors are playing.  And really appreciate how Mr. Southerland's staging of the boarding of the lifeboats and sinking of the ship is enhanced by Mr. Shaw's camera angles.  It is theater that has been staged as theater AND as cinema, with many scenes happening simultaneously in one small space, like cuts from scene to scene to scene, only all up on one stage - with the added dimension of cinematography, it is an unbeatably satisfying movie-going experience.  The show has matured well beyond the original 1997 production and I wonder if this new script is being produced far and wide, giving other theater companies the benefit of the new material and attitudes, but the truth is that doesn't matter in this case because this is the production that they chose to film to celebrate TITANIC THE MUSICAL'S anniversary, and with good reason.  It's good theater, it's good filmmaking, it's good storytelling - all of which are always worthwhile.  And this one is definitely worth a night out at the movies.  

TITANIC THE MUSICAL will be presented by Fathom Events and BY Experience on November 4th and 8th in cinemas around the country.  Get information and buy tickets HERE.

Visit the TITANIC THE MUSICAL Website HERE.

Photos by Pamela Raith provided by Fathom Events.

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