A fateful voyage is steered by strong performances in 'Titanic the Musical'
“Titanic the Musical” strives to tackle issues of class, immigration and hubris. Moreover, the Marriott cast gives the underwhelming score soaring power.
The tragic tale of the Titanic has resurfaced in force this spring.
Head to Streeterville, and you’ll find “Titanique,” a wackadoodle send-up of the iconic 1997 blockbuster movie about the doomed ship that sank 113 years ago on April 12.
Meanwhile, the Marriott Lincolnshire on Wednesday night opened the five-time Tony Award winner, “Titanic the Musical”
Directed and choreographed for the Marriott by Connor Gallagher, the highly romanticized take on the maritime tragedy is good, but not great. In 1997, Maury Yeston (music and lyrics) and Peter Stone (book) received Tonys for their work. The score, however, is serviceable but not memorable. The characters lean more toward caricatures. And to be clear: Jack and Rose are not part of this story.
The ending is a given: Almost everybody dies. But the North Atlantic sinking that killed more than 1,500 people is only part of the equation under Gallagher’s able direction. “Titanic the Musical” strives to tackle issues of class, immigration and hubris. Moreover, the Marriott cast gives the underwhelming score soaring power.
The first act is all exposition and little tension: We meet scrappy, happy-go-lucky Irish immigrants down in steerage, oligarchs on the upper decks, second-class passengers with first-class aspirations, and the ship’s crew — notably the soot-covered men below decks feeding the ravenous 29 coal-burning boilers that power the ship.
We spend most of the first act anticipating the collision between the iceberg and the massive vessel, and most of the second act waiting for the inevitable ending. To the credit of designers Jesse Klug (lights) and Michael Daly (sound), the staging of both collision and sinking are harrowing.
So is the class divide, which becomes brutally apparent when lifeboats come into play. The scenes are simultaneously literal and metaphorical: The rich are brought to the lifeboats (which had room for roughly half of the 2,000-plus passengers). The immigrants and the boiler stokers are locked in where they are and left to perish.
In its last scenes, the musical finally takes emotional hold, as crew and passengers — Captain E.J. Smith (David Girolmo), first-class steward Henry Etches (Kevin Webb) and ship architect Thomas Andrews (Christopher Kale Jones) among them — make somber, heart-felt farewells.
Girolmo and his stentorian vocals gives Captain Smith a pensive gravitas — he’s heroic, standing on deck until there is no more deck. Ship financier J. Bruce Ismay (Adam Pelty) is the villain, insisting the ship speed up so he won’t miss a pending meeting in New York. Ironically, Ismay also wants the ship’s speed to make it a maritime “legend.”
Standouts in the ensemble include Lillian Castillo and James Earl Jones II as second-class passengers Alice and Edgar Beane. As Alice infiltrates first-class salons and dining rooms, Castillo gives her maximum verve and hope. Edgar is exasperated, but as Alice says with over-bubbling joy, in America anyone can go from rags to riches.
As the first-class steward Etches, Webb lights up the stage every time he’s on it. Etches initially presents as a persnickety snobbish control freak, but his final scenes are quietly gut-punching moments of pathos. As stoker Frederick Barrett, Darian Goulding brings muscular pride, simmering rage and a galvanic baritone to the sweltering maw of the ship. Irish couple Kate McGowen and Jim Farrell (Erica Stephen and Garrett Lutz) embody a plucky, can-do spirit...
But while the set doesn’t capture the floating behemoth’s grandeur and scale, the vocals do. When the ensemble lets loose on “In Every Age,” the show’s opening number, the sound is majestic and expansive, and it carries that power throughout.
The Titanic’s very name, born of Greek mythology, illustrates the ignorance and hubris of those who deemed the man-made marvel “too big to sink.” The Titans were the all-powerful Gods of ancient Greece until they were utterly destroyed, never to return, by Zeus. In the show’s final moments, and in Marriott’s capable telling, survivors’ hope floats alongside tragedy.
