Titanique Off-Broadway Reviews

Eventually “Titanique” comes into its own as it revs up into increasing absurdity and the actors try to out-ham one another. Contrast that with Michael Kinnan’s one-man retelling of “Titanic,” “Never Let Go”: If that production captured the emotion running through both the movie and the feeling of watching it, this one doubles down on “Titanic” and Dion as modern camp icons.

Outrageously funny Mindelle plays Celine as an omniscient narrator who, we learn during a Titanic museum tour at the start, is actually 150 years old and was onboard the ship with our favorite characters. Sure! She pops in every so often to gloriously upstage everybody else. Mindelle’s performance is a sensational, hilarious and deranged turn that rises above a 2 a.m. Las Vegas impression. Yes, if you are a big Celine fan like, ahem, a certain tabloid newspaper critic is, you’ll howl at the actress’ borrowed Celine-isms from old viral YouTube videos and banter from the “A New Day Live” album. But the performance — conversational, occasionally improvised and quite affectionate — is more than mockery.

Admirers of the movie and of Ms. Dion are obviously the target audience; to get the most out of the show it’s best to be a fanatical double-partisan. I admired the plush cinematic richness of the movie, while deploring its length (the Titanic sank more quickly), and as someone unfamiliar with much of Ms. Dion’s extensive songbook, I was more taken with the sheer loopiness of the show than the blandly “adult contemporary” music. But whether blasting out pop balladry or silly shtick, the engaging cast beams joy at the audience, and receives it in turn, throughout.

“Titanique” delivers. It’s really funny. And it doesn’t matter that the film “Titanic” is celebrating its 25th anniversary this month. Much more important is how alternately silly and nasty and irreverent and delicious the writers Marla Mindelle, Constantine Rousouli and Tye Blue are at sending up the current crop of Broadway jukebox musicals and musicals based on classic movies. In other words, “Titanic” the movie may be a quarter century old, but the subject of this stage parody is practically every musical now performing on a Broadway stage.

As jokes land and jokes sink, there’s still the joy of hearing many of Dion’s greatest hits, a cavalcade of top-tier pop. As with “Mamma Mia!” and other jukebox musicals, if you take time to think beforehand where these songs will fit, you can probably guess the placements of such earworms as “Taking Chances,” “Tell Him,” “Because You Loved Me,” “I Drove All Night,” “The Prayer,” and “To Love You More.” And if you love these songs, it doesn’t really matter where they end up – just that they’re enthusiastically and often superbly sung!

Titanique is one of those shows where anything can happen, so it does, up until the final twists that you surely won't see coming. It's best just to grab your friends, grab some drinks (the show sells them in buckets), and just get on board. The cast and creators' enthusiasm is infectious, and if you just let it wash over you, you'll have a boatload of fun.

My fears about the production were almost immediately assuaged when I entered the theatre and saw the giant, disco ball-like, glittering heart of the ocean (designed by Eric Reynolds) gloriously dangling in front of the curtain. It was at once beautifully crafted, and camp as Christmas, which pretty much sums up the show that followed once the curtain rose. The tight and witty book by Mindelle, Rousouli, and Tye Blue—who also directs—touches on a cornucopia of pop culture references, many of which will particularly resonate with queer audiences, and I’ll leave you to the delight of discovering them for yourself.