Mickey Jo (0:00)

You want to know what I thought of Titanique? I'll tell you what I thought of Titanique. But really the only thing I need to tell you about what I thought of Titanique is that I pulled a muscle right here in my side, laughing hysterically during this show. I don't know if that's ever happened to me before. That's how funny this is. Oh my God. Ahoy. Welcome back to my theatre themed YouTube channel. Or hello to you if you are listening on podcast platforms. My name is Mickey Jo and I'm obsessed with all things theatre. I'm a professional theatre critic here on social media and this evening I went to go and see a press performance of Titanique, the Off Broadway cult hit musical parodying the iconic film Titanic by James Cameron, which has recently sailed across the Atlantic, but with more luck than the original voyage in the other direction as well, and docked in the West End at the Criterion Theatre where it is about to open. Now, tonight's performance was not my first time seeing the show. It was actually my third because I had seen the Off Broadway production previously and when I saw it it was a little while ago and it still featured some of its original stars and co writers Marla Mindel and Constantine Rasooli. And last month I also saw the very first preview performance of this London production. I was hugely curious about how it was going to fare with London audiences because it's quite a thing for an off Broadway queer sort of underground musical to be playing in a glittering West End house. It's a very different kind of a sensibility and we have very different audiences. That is one of many aspects of this production which we will be discussing today. We will also be talking through the nature of the show. If you know nothing about Titan Titanique and you are curious as to what everyone is talking about, I will explain the ethos of the thing, why it is so hilarious, why I enjoyed it so much. And of course we'll also be talking about the performances of really this all star West End cast. Of course, if you have been lucky enough to see Titanique already at the Criterion Theater in the West End, make sure to comment below with all of your thoughts about this production or if you've seen it anywhere else in the world, it has recently popped up also in Canada and in Australia. Let us know what you thought of that experience as well. Finally, if you enjoy this review, make sure you are following me on podcast platforms, here, on YouTube, on other social media apps, wherever it may be for more theater content coming soon in the Meantime, Titanique, West End. Shall we go for it? Ow. Jesus. So I would love to tell you a little bit about what this show is and also how it came to be, because its creators, its trio of creators, Marlon Mindel, Constantine Rasooli, both of whom are performers, and Ty Blue, who is also the show's director, were together making film parody musicals as dinner theater in Los Angeles with, like, limited commercial or critical success. Like, it was a fun, novel, zany thing that they were doing. And you can see many clips of these on YouTube. Actually, my personal favorite, which I discovered years before Titanique, was their unauthorized musical parody of the Devil Wears Prada in which Marla played Emily and after getting hit by a car, sang Miley Cyrus Wrecking Ball while bouncing up and down on an exercise ball. That, my friends, is art. And it was as they were doing these shows like Home Alone and True Beverly Hills that I believe Constantine pitched to Marla. I know what we're gonna do for the next one. We're gonna do Titanic, but you're gonna play Celine Dion, and we're gonna do all Celine Dion songs. And that gave way to something unexpectedly successful, which was Titanique, and the rest is very much history. They had readings. It really resonated, especially with the queer community in Wings. It was staged off Broadway, then transferred to a different Off Broadway theater, where it continues to run now in New York. And though it has a decidedly silly sensibility, it became an unexpected recipient of a handful of awards and critical acclaim, and it's really become this cult off Broadway hit. And I think that has a lot to do with the fact that there is a deceptive universality to it, even though a lot of the references peppered throughout the show are specific, niche gay cultural references. We talk about Luanne from the Real Housewives of New York. Not as much in Love London, but it still gets a reference. They talk about RuPaul's Drag Race, which admittedly is kind of mainstream now. They talk about a whole handful of other things within the queer community. But I've realized, and seeing this multiple times, the way that they approach the story of Titanic and turning it into Titanique and kind of bastardizing the film, the beloved film is not dissimilar to the way that you would watch a film you kind of love to make fun of with friends. And you would share a bottle, two bottles, three bottles of wine, push the. Push the boat out, and you would have your inside jokes about it, and, like, characters pop up, and you would be like, oh, it's Victor Garber. It's Victor Garber again. And the kind of attitude they have towards these characters and towards this story feels like you're having that kind of a tipsy night with friends, enjoying Titanic through this kind of a hazy recollective lens, because it does adapt the story of the film. But the concept behind Titanique is that Celine Dion herself appears during the opening scene scene in the Titanic museum and reveals to everyone that this is not how she remembers the story. I'm not going to attempt to do an impression that will not go well. I can't sustain it, I'm going to be honest with you. But she makes the bold claim that she, Celine Dion, was in fact on board the Titanique and this is not how she remembers it. So she is going to, for the following 90 minutes, tell the story of Titanic from her perspective, using, of course, her own back catalog. And at all times being Celine Dion in all of her mannerisms and her personality. The, the, the most quintessential version of Celine Dion giving you the hair, giving you the sparkly dress, giving you this, giving you kooky, crazy girlfriend. And that premise alone, the idea that Celine was on the Titanic. And it's sort of just an extension of her in the music video for My Heart Will Go on, right where she's walking dramatically around the ship looking stunning with the hair billowing like that. Extension of that. The idea of her being on the ship and telling everything from her warped perspective that is anachronistic and is campy and is silly is so funny as a concept. Everything is funny afterwards. Like everything that happens thereafter is hilarious because that one idea is so winning, it gets the ball rolling with such force that for the rest of it, it just has constant momentum. And it's not mean spirited towards the film either. It's like there's a lot of love in there as well. But alongside adding in completely new ridiculous subplots and a lot of smupped and a lot of really silly gags and the kind of inside jokes that you would just come up with with friends and the kind of stupid ad libs that actors who are also friends will come up with in rehearsals when they are developing something. As well as all of that wonderful stuff. There are also all of the jokes that people love to make about Titanic. They talk about there being plenty of room on the door, the physical personification of the iceberg. Spoiler alert. Walks onto the stage towards the end after Rose says, I'll never let go, Jack, and then watches him, like, drift off into the Freezing ocean to his death. And the iceberg shames Rose and saying, well, that's what you did. And then Rose is like, well, no, I did. And the iceberg's like, no, no, that's what you did. And as if all of that is not recipe enough for brilliance, you have the back catalog of Celine Dion. The story behind them getting the rights to this is a very interesting and serendipitous one. But thank goodness that they did, because this really is the making of the show as well, that they get to use all of these songs. And then you kind of get humor deriving from the same place that it does in and Juliet, because they use these songs in a lot of fun circumstances. At the beginning when it's alleged that, like, if Selena had been on the Titanic, she would surely be dead. And she says, how could that be when I'm alive? And she sings, I'm alive, of course there is. My heart will go on, of course. But you also have the captain, Victor Garber, driving the ship too fast and dancing gaily across the stage while singing the absolute belter of a Celine Dion song, I Drove All Night. You have her doing the Beauty and the Beast duet with Peabo Bryson, with canonical Peabo Bryson, while Jack and Rose are dancing together at dinner. And many, many more clever things. My favourite of which might be the song Tell him, becoming a vocal trio between Rose and Molly Brown, who is ultimately referred to as Molly, and as Kathy Bates, of course, the actress who played her in the film, and then Celine herself. This is another hilarious aspect of the show, is that Celine will often interject herself into these songs. And as Rose is being painted by Jack, Celine will lounge in front. And Celine can't resist the opportunity. Like, she introduces these characters and she introduces everything that's happening, and then invariably she will work her way back into the song because she loves singing it so much. But the genius about tell him is taking these very earnest romantic lyrics and making them about coaching Rose on her what is going to be her first sexual experience. And this is really the realm in which Titanique lives. I'm not telling you to take your children. I'm telling you to have a glass of wine beforehand and have a great time. Listen, get a babysitter. Live a little. There is one more aspect of the show's material I feel we ought to discuss, which is the element of improv. This arises a few times and really the nature of the show and the comedy tone of the whole thing is such that there are various opportunities for improv. Throughout and things can be added in and asides can appear in the show sort of fluctuates a little like that. But there are some specific signposted moments for extended improvised sections, one of which is the responsibility of the actress playing Celine as Jack and Rose are going to meet each other at the clock. And this has become something of a semi vital viral social media moment because many of the best ones have been uploaded to the show's social accounts on Instagram and Tick Tock. Marlon Mandel, where she originated the role, would come up with these extended comic speeches. Nicole Parker, when she took over, who is a former Alphabet and who is a former comedy TV icon, would come up with these different comedy characters, these different voices. On one occasion she made a whole extended Jason River Brown style festive musical number for like 10 minutes. All the while, the actors playing Jack and Rose are meant to be lip syncing along and being basically puppeteered by the performer playing Celine. And they have no idea where this is going. And it's, it's just a joy for everyone involved. These are great moments and I live for them. All of which I hope conveys the love that I have for Titanique. But it is also full of specific cultural references, originally many of them tethered to New York. And so even with all of its prior success, there was no guarantee that the show was going to be received well in London. The question may be how are London audiences taking to Titanique? Here is the answer. Now, I had no intention of reviewing the first preview. That's not what we do during previews. But it has given me enough insight to see how they have adapted the show and tailored it in very small ways to the West End crowd. It's really not significant changes. There is one line that I'm so thrilled that they changed and I'm going to tell you what it was before. There is a gag off Broadway where Cal Rose's villainous fiance, after presenting her with this huge, garish, cheap looking stage version of the Heart of the Ocean necklace, which weighs very heavily around her. It looks like an enormous Christmas decoration. He tells her that he got it at Jarrod's, which gets a laugh off Broadway because it's, I assume, a cheap jeweller's now first preview in London. Jordan Luggage Gage, who is playing the role, said he got it at Argos and it wasn't really getting a laugh and had interviewed the cast beforehand. And I've spoken to Jordan before and I was umming and ahhing about messaging him and saying tell them it needs to be Claire's accessory, specifically just Claire's. And that will get a laugh because Argos is not specifically a jeweler. So when you're ranking jewelers and you're saying it goes H. Samuel, Pandora and then Argos, it's a ridiculous thing to say because that's not. It's not a jeweller's. It doesn't come into the conversation. But if you said Claire's, that at least is on the list. And tonight, after a preview picture period, it's been changed to Claire's. And I hadn't said anything, I just manifested it. And that one little change, which does recur a couple of times as a joke and now gets a big laugh, is an excellent example of paying attention to the audiences and engaging enough with the local culture to figure out what is going to work here. There are some other things that have been added in as well. There's an eastenders moment, there's a Gemma Collins joke, and there's also a lot of stuff that's universal and a lot of queer stuff that's universal. Drag race jokes seem to play well wherever there are still people in the UK who know who Countess Luann is, as they should. And of course, all of the humor about the film. And there are, I admit, a couple of New York references that still aren't necessarily landing. Many of them we just sort of pass by them at speed and it doesn't really matter. There is one that motivates Cal and Rose's mother, both trying to coerce the captain into getting the ship to New York faster. And the joke is that Cal has a hair appointment in Soho and they book ware out and this doesn't really work. There are a couple of reasons why this doesn't work. When you're off Broadway in New York and it's nearby, you have to imagine there are members of that audience who have tried to get a hair appointment in Soho and they know that they book way out in London. That doesn't really mean much to us. But also we have our own Soho. It's about 7 minutes walk away from the theater. And it doesn't really have the same kind of a sensibility. If you want to get a haircut in Soho, you can walk into Splash and they'll give you a 15 pound haircut within five minutes. And so, given this new context for the show, what might be funnier in that kind of a situation, a joke that may land better with a British audience, is if Cal was really eager to do something like very touristy in any case, I'm happy to report it is going down very well with the British audience. And if the men's bathroom queue after the show was any indication, they are finding their audience. And it's easy to worry about those cultural references, but there is so much of it that's also so widely crowd pleasing. Like Leighton Williams is playing the iceberg in this, but the iceberg is conceived as Tina Turner as the iceberg singing River Deep, Mountain High. And Leighton is coming on and giving it this fierce, all singing, all dancing, drag Persona, Tina Turner performance that's going to be entertaining wherever you are. You also have the vocals of it all. You have the Bonker staging, you have the visual gags, you have the sheer ridiculousness of the way that they've chosen to represent some of these characters. That Jack has this friend who kind of looks like Luigi from Mario Kart, so he literally becomes Luigi from Mario Kart. The captain is referred to only as Victor Garber. The only other sailor we see is called Seaman. Rose's mother is played by an actor barely in drag who is sporting some kind of a fascinator with two seagulls in a nest. The whole thing is so charmingly and delightfully bonkers. They've really struck gold with this. It is a winning concept that has been wonderfully achieved by director Ty Blue. And it's been brilliantly cast in the West End as well. I have to say, I do wonder because it's in the West End and because it's not downtown and people aren't rushing to go to a bar afterwards or go to a restaurant afterwards because London audiences generally will eat beforehand because everywhere closes. I wonder if they could put an interval in. It runs without an intermission in New York, but there's not as much of a reason for it not to here because we actually buy drinks at the bar, like many people, the majority of the audience probably do. People actually buy ice creams and merchandise and programs in the interval. Ours are a lot more functional than the American ones are. And the is probably long enough that it would make sense to put it in. Some of my favorite jokes in Titanique are brilliant prop humor. We see Jack's drawings after Rose looks at them and she's like, wow, you have a gift. You really see people. And then she turns the sketch pad around and he's drawing like a stick figure cat. And when he paints her later and she's sporting a bra with pixelated nude colors on it to represent the Rose nudity from the film, he draws her as a cat with ginger hair. Another iconic scene, of course, the moment in the car with the steamed up windows is achieved by the three backing singers bringing on two sides of a plastic toy car. And just like a steamy pane of glass and they put their hands against it. Rose wears the door like a backpack. She turns around and it has Celine Dion in a star on it. It's so silly. There are so many opportunities where they're like, we can add a joke here, we can add a joke here, anywhere. They can cram humor into this. They do. And it becomes this hysterical, silly playground for all of these performers. Who I'm going to tell you about next, let's talk about the West End cast of Titanique. So I'm not kidding when I tell you that this is something of an all star West End cast led by Lauren Drew, who is giving this breakthrough performance as Celine Dion. She has been seen before as Fantine in Les Miserables on the first UK tour of six, as Catherine of Aragon, as Brooke Winder in Legally Blonde at Regents Park Open Air Theater. But this feels like a defining moment in her career, landing the coveted role of Celine Dion in the original western production of Titanique as the leading lady. And as soon as she was announced for this, I understood the vision completely. Vocally. She is a powerhouse. She absolutely makes sense for it. But she is also incredibly kooky and incredibly funny in a very silly but a very charming way. There is such a warmth, warmth to her that everything, it comes across in a very Celine Dion way. There is something about her as a human that just feels very, very close to Celine. And it has never been in any of the productions about the closest Celine imitation possible. Marla, when she was singing, didn't sound especially like Celine Dion. It's like, it's like a parody of Celine, but you can see her in there and she is obviously overdrawn and she is obviously rendered just a little bit ridiculous. But you also can't help but fall in love with her as soon as she gets going and she hikes up that slit in her sparkly dress and she is like lurching athletically around the stage and engaging with the audience and pulling these wacky facial expressions and like demanding applause and also coming across completely delusional. Whenever she comes in to applause or laughter from a previous scene or moment, she thanks the audience for it and that creates even more. She has a great timing with the audience as well. She does great at the improv moment. Sounds sensational, lands the laugh. She's not playing the captain of the ship, but she is the one steering it on that stage and she's doing great. Next up, let's talk about our Jack and Rose, played by Rob Houchen and Kat Ronnie. Rob is another one. As soon as he was announced for this, I thought that absolutely makes perfect sense. He can deliver the necessary vocal affectation. He can give you a diva vocal and he's very funny as well. He hasn't really had the opportunity in his career to play much comedy on stage. He's done a lot of heavy shows like the Light in the Piazza, which he was brilliant in, and Les Mis as Marius for a long time. But we're getting to see many more of his talents in Titanique. And he knows how to get comedy out of this slightly more challenging comic character where it's like how do you make Leonardo DiCaprio in Titanic funny? And it's by just overdoing the young male romantic hero of it all. He really smartly satirizes that cinematic, lovelorn quality. The way he dances is also great. The vocals are obviously astounding. We are expecting nothing less. But where he really wins out here is he has such an understanding of this comic tone. His sense of humor is so attuned to where this show is. He understands how to make these little interjections work. When he's talking her down off of the edge of the boat and convincing her not to jump in and she says she's really to do it, he very quickly says, is it because of your hair? And then she says, what? And then he carries on like there's so many moments that he just lands effortlessly because he knows absolutely what to do with them. Count Ronnie, meanwhile, is a delightfully charming ingenue as Rose. So much of her brilliance is in the face and in the eyes. She also has a fantastic, stellar voice that we actually don't get to hear nearly enough of in this show. But she has this sort of wide, doe eyed quality and so many of the faces that she pulls when she is getting sort of like sexually emanc later on in the narrative and she's falling in love and she's making choices for herself. She is such a good visual comic at every moment where she needs to be carrying on with the embarrassment of riches that is this cast. We have Jordan Luke Gage as her fiance Cal, who is depicted in this show as metrosexual slash suspiciously camp. Something that Jordan, much like Rob, actually hasn't really had the opportunity to play in his career. He has also played Fabrizio in the Light in the Piazza he was in and Juliet, where we saw a little of this quality. He was Clyde in the UK's Bonnie and Clyde. But this, even though he is officially ish, not really playing a gay character here, it is overtly campy and queer in its tone, and he is delighting in that. That's key to his and a lot of the cast's comedy and charm really, is the fact that they look to be having so much fun on stage with each other. He has some fantastic vocal highlights towards the end of the show, as does Charlotte Wakefield, who is playing the unsinkable Molly Brown slash Kathy Bates. I do want to say that I don't need for this to become Charlotte Wakefield suddenly entering into this kind of age range for the rest of her career because she was playing an ingenue in the great British Bake off musical not that long ago. She just did the Spring Awakening reunion concert, and I know that that was harkening back to a role she had played years before. But I'm not ready for us to be aging up Charlotte Wakefield, not just yet. That being said, she's a wonderful Molly Brown. Also doing fantastic work. Darren Bennett as Victor Garber, the ship's captain slash Luigi. And it's as Victor Garber that he sings one of my favorite Celine Dion songs, I Drove All Night, and he is sashaying across the stage and he is thwacking a fan and he is giving us dance and he I've never seen a human being commit more to a little eight count of choreography and vocal than Darren Bennett is doing in this moment. That man is having more fun than I've perhaps ever had in my life, and I need to reevaluate my choices because, my goodness. And this is a role that's been played by an array of people. In the New York production, Frankie Grande had played this role. He's also attached to the show. Various drag queens, Rose and Willam had played this role. Tommy Bracco has recently played this role. Darren Bennett, a very different type to all of the above, but makes it work and also kind of plays Victor Garber the most convincingly out of anyone, which I do think helps to land that reference with a British audience. There is also killer vocal support from the show's onstage trio of backing vocalists, but I have saved for the final two mentions, two of the show's standout performances, one of which is given by Leighton Williams, who plays multiple different characters, including, as mentioned, Tina Turner as the iceberg. And Leighton is delivering you diva attitude from the very beginning. Perfect for this material and perfect for taking the material that's on the page and bringing a British comedy to it at the same time. Leighton takes a hold of Titanique and delivers it to a UK sensibility very well, I think. And this moment that Leighton has as the iceberg is so very show stopping. He could do anything in that moment. The audience is so utterly won over. And I forget what a strong vocalist Leighton Williams is as well. With the right kind of a genre, with the right kind of a rocky song beneath him. Astounding dancer and just the presence and the personality, it's. It all just works completely. This is a fantastic role for Layton. Finally, the MVP for me. Both times I have seen this show. Stephen Guarino, who plays Rose's mother, Ruth. Now, Stephen has previously played this role, I believe, perhaps even in a workshop version of the show, and is the only American performer joining this company in a principal role. I'm not sure whether that's because they struggled to cast it over here, but Stephen is so hilarious, so perfect in this track. He has another extended improvised monologue moment where Rose's mother is having this breakdown and belittling her and screaming at her and getting hysterical about their financial situation. Stephen is also evidently an accomplished dancer and is Shanae turning across the stage and is just. It's utterly manic. It's the kind of quick, biting comedy that can parry with the audience as well as other members of the cast. He's such a formidable wit and his old school comedy as well. He get huge laughs just from a take and then he can change the take and get another laugh. He could, he could do this for hours on stage and it's a restricted amount of time in the show, sadly, but it's one of my favorite parts of the whole thing when Steven Guarino is let loose to just bring comedic chaos. And this material and the casting of this role could be a little bit of a head scratching moment were it not for a really strong performance like this. Like I said, a fantastic cast that the show has found for its West End run. That is, I believe everything that I have to say about Titanique. It's a lot of fun, it's silly, it's zany, it is camper than anything has ever been before. We are a nation who understands pantomime and this is not a million miles from that. And I hope that this not only finds the audience that it is seeking in the West End, but I hope it also sort of helps to shift the West End a little bit to the idea that musicals like this can exist and that more of them can exist. It's kind of very edible fringe in terms of like, this is something people will enjoy and want to see. It's not saying anything huge, it's not art and culture in the way that we usually deify them, but it's wildly entertaining. It's a great night out. It's maybe the funniest show in London right now, and for all of those reasons and more is entirely valid. Go and check it out. If this sounds like something that would interest you at the Criterion Theatre in London West End, or if you are watching this internationally, go and check out Titanique in a city or a country near you, or stay tuned for its perhaps imminent arrival. Thank you so much for listening to this review. I hope that you've enjoyed. In the meantime, make sure to comment down below with all of your thoughts about Titanique and make sure you're subscribed to me right here on YouTube with the notifications turned on so you don't miss any of my upcoming video reviews or following me on podcast platforms. I hope that everyone is staying safe and that you have have a stagey day for 10 more seconds. I'm Mickey Jo Theatre. Oh my God. Hey, thanks for watching Have a Stagey Day. Subscribe.