Musical theatre fans will want to know if they’re in for a Titanic sized triumph or if this show is as sunk as the ship that inspires the story. Unfortunately it’s more the latter.
We saw Titanic the musical at the Wycombe Swan Theatre in High Wycombe, but it’s my understanding that the show is on tour and so may be coming to you at a later date. This is the second time I’ve seen this musical staged and I wasn’t so impressed in the previous production. I had hoped that maybe I had gotten it wrong or that this production would be much better by alas I did not enjoy it.
This may be a controversial view on the show, as I saw from the flyers that other reviewers for big publications gave it several four star reviews and even a five star review from one place. I on the other hand thought the show was a near complete dud in the first act and only really gets going in the second half.
For clarification, I don’t blame the cast for this. They do a fine job and are a talented group of singers and actors, but I felt the material they had to work with was mind bogglingly weak. The book and lyrics are kinda terrible in my honest opinion, and I will break down my reasons for this.
My biggest gripe with the musical is the songs. The music and lyrics are by Maury Yeston, and whilst I have no issues with the music, the lyrics are bland and mostly pointless and rarely rhyme and are more just like sung dialogue. This opens up the age old argument from schools of should poems have to rhyme? The arty out there will argue no and whilst I can get on board with that to a degree that not all poems should have to rhyme, I do feel that other than in small examples songs should.
Most songs do rhyme, and will also use a variety of other elements such as alliteration, metaphors, and clever or emotional lyrics. I feel like Titanic failed on most of these. Also a lot of the songs are that screechy annoying old style of musical theatre. These aren’t songs you’ll be singing back later on the car journey home. And again this isn’t a dig at the cast – they were all great singers, but the songs being screechy and annoying was just for the sake of showing the cast can sing high notes and hold them and not because it sounds that good as a song.
The script by Peter Stone has terrible pacing and is bloated by so many characters it was hard to care about anyone. It was all generally poorly plotted out and with underdeveloped characters and plotlines. Literally the first fifteen or twenty minutes of the show is a never ending song just showing the large cast arrive to board the Titanic and we get introductions to all of them within this song. There were just far too many characters to keep track of, and to attempt to introduce them all within a song meant that you couldn’t learn anything significant about anyone.
The next section of the show was just to show the rich first class laughing snootily around a dining table where we still couldn’t learn much about anyone. After this we get a contrasting scene of the third class and this is where you finally get a sense of any of the characters at all. This doesn’t lead to much though as often you go ages before we revisit anyone in particular.
Off the top of my head I remember that there were three characters called Kate and one of them is pregnant but pursues a marriage with a random guy she meets on board. These two are the closest that fans of the Titanic movie get to having a Jack and Rose on board. And I know Jack and Rose were fictional creations for the 1997 James Cameron movie, and this musical is said to be based on the real passengers, but what the film got right that the musical gets wrong is that as an audience we need some central characters to follow. Pregnant Kate and her fella barely feature more than any other character in the show.
Towards the end of the first act there is suddenly an old couple who have a song and when they appeared I was asking myself if we’d ever seen them before.
The most developed characters and story throughout the whole thing is the Captain, the designer of the ship and the money man who keeps pushing the Captain to make the ship go faster on the quest to get the ship into New York within six days of setting off. As I’m sure everyone who sees this show will know the true story of the ship sinking, it’s their scenes that hint at speeding the boat up and the threat on icebergs which were noticed that stand out most. Although we visit these characters most they still feel fairly flat and one dimensional because of the script not doing anything else to show their personalities. The money guy is basically a Doctor Who villain, and Captain EJ Birdseye only has a couple of scenes which aren’t just exposition about how fast the ship is going.
The three characters share a song in the second act about which is to blame for the impending sinking of the ship. Is it the Captain who is in charge? Is it the guy who designed it? Or is it the money man who pushed to go faster. The answer of course is all three in some way, but in a bigger way, and not trying to be controversial to the family of the Captain, but it was blatantly the Captain’s fault. Ultimately he is in charge and has final say over anything the ship does at sea and shouldn’t be pressured by an idiot money man.
The first act ends with a lookout seeing that the ship is about to hit the iceberg and when it does we cut to black. Fair enough as there was very limited effects in the show, with only the designer of the ship hanging from a balcony that tips towards the end of the show as any sign of the ship sinking.
There is a really weird scene where the women and children are loaded into the life rafts. And when I say children, there are no children in the cast, but one woman has a baby doll. Fair enough, but if they had included even two child cast members it could have done a lot to show the gravity of the sinking with them in peril. The scene of them getting onto the life boats is so weird for the fact that some of the women were literally thrown across stage and even though they were miming landing in mimed life boats it was the weird way in which they were thrown on. Surely they would have stepped on or if need be jumped on, but it was like pirates throwing people overboard.
The second act is certainly much better as we deal entirely with the sinking of the ship and this does allow some tension to build. It’s just a shame that the first act completely failed to make me care about any of the characters at all.
The solo song the ship’s designer has that explains the changes that could have been done to the ship’s design that would have saved everyone was probably the worst song in the whole show for the reason that it was just non rhyming description of the parts of the ship and adjustments that could have been made. I somewhat judge these songs by the criteria of whether I’d want to listen to these songs after the show, if the songs would be a good audition piece or if someone could go to karaoke or try out on Britain’s Got Talent and sing them. For the most part none of the songs would fit the criteria as they were just rambling nonsense.
I also judge the show by the criteria of could scenes, songs or characters be cut or are they essential to tell the story. In the case of Titanic he Musical I’d argue that other than the Captain and money man any character could be cut and it would still be the same show. Also, you could cut any song or most songs all at the same time and the story would be unaffected. The only scenes that were essential to tell the story of the show in the first act were them boarding the ship, the hints at the danger, and it hitting the iceberg. In act two pretty much any scene could be cut.
Despite all this harsh criticism, and yes I know I have been particularly harsh, there was still something enjoyable about the second act. The build of tension was effective and the performers did a fine job with weak material.
The set is simple with a balcony and a few ropes and some moving stairs. No we don’t get any sense of the iceberg visually, or any life boats or water flooding the ship at all. That’s fine though. A more creative production could have found ways with light and/or projection and we could have seen some more of the horror of the cold water and people drowning, which I know sounds grim, but if you’re producing a musical based on the events of the Titanic sinking you should expect these be part of the show.
Dance wise there are a few dancey moments, but nothing super memorable. You’re not going to get big elaborate dances to abstractly show the panic of the sinking and instead get a couple of dances of when characters would dance in first or third class.
If you’ve seen this show and enjoyed it good for you, but my lasting thoughts of it was that it was a badly written, poorly paced show with non-existent character development and unmemorable songs with poor lyrics.
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