BWW Reviews: Circle Players Makes Triumphant Return to TPAC Aboard TITANIC THE MUSICAL

Circle Players, one of the first resident companies at the Tennessee Performing Arts Center, makes a triumphant return to that cultural edifice in downtown Nashville to mount its latest revival of Titanic the Musical just in time to commemorate the 100^th anniversary of the ship's sinking in the frigid waters of the north Atlantic.

With a creative team led by Tim Larson, the visionary director who first mounted the Maury Yeston-Peter Stone musical for the venerable community theater group in 2008, Titanic the Musical still packs an emotional wallop and the production values of this new mounting are truly exceptional-the sumptuous physical trappings of the production, which include the sets used in the most recent national tour and the stunning costumes provided by designer Cat Arnold and her estimable team, rival the best you've ever seen on a Nashville stage.

Titanic the Musical is a fitting vehicle for Circle's first TPAC production in several years and represents the great strides made by the company in recent years, the ambitious efforts of its extraordinary group of volunteers truly representing the best of Nashville theater.

Yet, after all is said and done, I can't help but miss the more engaging nature of the show when it is played in more intimate confines (in 2008, "the ships of dreams" first set sail at the Z. Alexander Looby Theatre, then it was revived in 2010 in partnership with The Larry Keeton Theatre). In a smaller venue, the audience feels more directly connected to the dramatic events onstage-you feel more involved in the lives of the myriad characters represented in the script-and so the musical's ultimate outcome, however expected it may be, seems somehow more personal.

While the more imposing Polk Theatre provides the ideal setting for the soaring set and The Lofty aspirations of Circle's leaders, the more sumptuous setting also magnifies the production's shortcomings (not the least of which is the unevenness often found among community theater casts, which can be of such far-ranging skill levels) and points out the obvious problems of Peter Stone's glossed-over treatment of the now-legendary tale of greed and avarice writ large across the ship, an obvious symbol of The Gilded Age, made more poignant of course by the enormous loss of life that resulted from the RMS Titanic's maiden voyage.

Stone's task in capturing the story of the RMS Titanic, encapsulating the stories of the 2,224 people onboard the floating city that was deemed unsinkable by its designer and builders, requires obvious herculean effort and when you consider the wealth of information, the abundance of Titanic minutiae and the personal stories fairly begging to be told, it's a wonder he was able to construct such a tale that is in the least bit accessible. But as a result, the characters tend to be archetypes (rather than flesh and blood depictions of real people), each meant to represent something more than their individuality would suggest. And therein lies the problem with the book: With such a rich, vivid collection of people to capture in the play, it's difficult for them to emerge as fully dimensional and intriguing.

Yeston's musical score, sometimes beautiful and stirring, too often sounds far too familiar or staggeringly similar and there are no songs that stand out from among the rest. In short, you are unlikely to leave the theatre humming a familiar tune, but you are likely to be haunted by the musical refrains that reverberate through your heart. As with its earlier incarnations, this production's most noteworthy musical numbers are the group choral numbers that very nearly lift the roof off the Polk Theatre, so exquisitely sung and so artfully rendered are they, particularly the final number "In Every Age/Godspeed Titanic" that is likely to leave you somewhat emotionally drained, your eyes dampened (if not by the tableaux of personal devastation you've just witnessed, then most certainly by the beauty of its performance). Larson's staging of that final, awe-inspiring scene is elegantly understated, thus providing the emotional payoff the audience has so eagerly anticipated.

Act One's most notable  number-"The Proposal"/"The Night Was Alive," performed by Joshua Waldrep as stoker Fred Barrett and Chad David Webb as Marconi radioman Harold Bride-is wonderfully evocative, sung with such heartfelt emotion by the two men, with Waldrep's particularly beautiful rendition still echoing in my mind.

The performances of Waldrep and Webb are but two of the excellent portrayals offered up in this production (how Larson keeps his head about him during the process still astounds me-he has a company of about 100 cast, crew and orchestra members clamoring for his attention and approval-and yet he keeps the company focused and committed, yielding a well-paced spectacle in the process), which is exemplified by some outstanding onstage turns, including Tim Bush (stalwart and regal as Captain E.J. Smith), Andrew Brooks (self-effacing as First Officer William Murdock), Timothy Finch (as Second Officer Charles Lightoller), Antonio Nappo (Fourth Officer Joseph Boxhall), Christian Redden (impressive as Lookout Frederick Fleet, who sounds the warning of the looming iceberg only seconds before the ship hits it) and Josh Wagner (as Steward Andrew Lattimer).

David Y. Williams returns in the role of First Class Steward Henry Etches, creating a truly memorable portrait of a man, totally devoted to duty, that will linger in your heart. Williams very nearly steals the show out from under the feet of the rest of the cast with his richly nuanced performance.

David Arnold reprises his role as Thomas Andrews, the ship's designer, with a forceful, perfectly scaled performance, displaying once again his versatility in the process, while Macon Kimbrough is at his sinister, condescending best as White Star Lines owner J. Bruce Ismay.

Among the First- and Second-class passengers, special notice should be given to Clay Hillwig and Melissa Silengo, who are fine as John Jacob and Madeline Astor; Mary Corby and Steve Luboniecki as Ida and Isidor Strauss; Jama Bown and Terry McLemore as Marion and John B.Thayer; Cat Arnold and Earl Landress as Alice and Edgar Beane;  and Laura Gabriel and J. Trey Palmer as Caroline Neville and her fiancé CharLes Clark.

As the Third-class passengers, Ben Gregory is well-cast as Jim Farrell, but it is the trio of Kates-Lauren Higgins as Kate McGowan, Laura Amond as Kate Mullen and Amber Boyer (who gives, perhaps, the most fully developed performance among the entire ensemble; your eyes are riveted to her performance in the final hectic moments as the passengers scramble to remain alive) as Kate Murphy-who create a believable, all too human portrait of loss and devastation.

The performance of Yeston's score (which might best be described as more akin to an English musical than the big and brassy Broadway fare you might initially expect), featuring the best efforts of music director John Kennerly and his 21-member orchestra, provides a much-needed foundation for the interpretation of the story, helping to bring it to life so beautifully, working in tandem with the choreography created by Kate Adams Johnson.

Jared McGowan's lighting design, while quite lovely in some scenes, seems rather murky and inexplicable in others. For example, when the cyc wall upstage is splashed with color and gobos, the focus seems fuzzy, the placement odd. In one scene, the cyc wall displays what must be low-hanging clouds, but you'll be thinking the Titanic somehow managed to barely skirt another iceberg on its journey across the Atlantic.

The production's sound design, credited to Tom Leis, provides numerous opportunities for audience members to scratch their heads and ponder the thought that somehow, somewhere in a city in which a good many people's livelihoods are dependent upon providing good and proper sound design-this is Music City, after all!-you'd think there would be someone who could provide outstanding sound design for live theater. Too often, on opening night, one could hear the crackle of interference, microphones that seemed not to be working and sound mixing which failed to provide the optimum auditory experience. For example, I did not understand any lyrics of Act One's "Doing the Latest Rag," and in the final dramatic scene in which ship designer Thomas Andrews rails against missing the obvious steps that could have prevented the tragedy, David Arnold's microphone didn't seem to be working. The actors and the audience deserve better.

- Titanic the Musical. Story and book by Peter Stone. Music and lyrics by Maury Yeston. Directed by Tim Larson. Music direction by John Kennerly. Choreography by Kate Adams Johnson. Presented by Circle Players at TPAC's James K. Polk Theatre, Nashville. Through April 8. For details, go to www.circleplayers.net; for tickets, call the TPAC Box Office at (615) 782-4040.

Photos by Rick Malkin

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