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- [00:00]
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- [02:19]
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And what if I said, amongst the confusion and uncertainty of this year's nominees for Best New Musical, we could all do a lot worse than to give the Tony to Titanique. What then? Ha Broadway. What then? Listen, we've got very good at celebrating this show for the campy, delightful silliness that it is. But I don't know if we're yet prepared for the conversation about how deceptively clever and brilliant it's been this entire time I'm about to tell you about Titanique on Broadway and if you don't like hearing what I have to say, you can fight me on a boat On a musical, sinking boat Ah, but just before we do, a quick introduction to me for those of you meeting me for the first time. Oh my God. Hey Bonjour Diva. Welcome to my theatre themed YouTube channel. Or hello to those of you listening to this Broadway theatre review on podcast platforms as is. You're right. My name is Mickey Jo and I am obsessed with all things theatre. I'm a theatre critic and a content creator here on social media and a few weeks ago now I traveled to New York to see as many new Broadway shows as possible. I saw 23 three in two weeks. Among them was Titanique. Although this was not my first visit to the Ship of Dreams, I first saw the show Off Broadway back in spring 2023. Subsequently, I have seen it a handful of times since it arrived in London's West End. I also saw a non replica production in Chicago. Finally, I got the chance to see the show at the St. James Theatre on Broadway, where my number one question was, does Titanique even work at the St. James Theatre on Broadway today? Like an expensive necklace recklessly dropped into the ocean, I bring you the answer as well as my wider thoughts on the show, why it works, the current Broadway cast and its peculiar origin story, as well, as you heard me correctly, why it may just deserve the Tony Award, even if I don't think it's necessarily gonna get it. Of course, while you are listening to my thoughts and insights, as always, I would love to hear yours. Please feel free to share those in the comments section down below. When and where have you seen Titanic previously and what did you think? And if you enjoy listening to my review and you would like to hear more of them, then you can find so many more wherever you are seeing my face or hearing my V and there will be more coming soon, so make sure you're subscribed with the notifications turned on or following me on podcast platforms. You can also sign up to my free weekly substack email newsletter where I tell you about the hundreds of shows that I see every year and every piece of content that I share about them. In the meantime, though, icebergs be damned, we are sailing boldly and inadvisably forward with this review of Titanique on Broadway. So there's every possibility that you've already heard the origin story of Titan. I want to flesh it out just a little bit for you. You've also very possibly heard me talk about this before, but the route that this show has taken to Broadway has been such a fascinating one, having originated on the other side of the United States when its Three co creators, performers Marla Mindel and Constantine Rasooli, as well as creative Ty Blue, were together working in Los Angeles dinner theater, where critically, they were creating and performing unauthorized musical versions of famous films using a jukebox SC many of which you can find recordings of on YouTube. Years before Titanique ever existed, I became obsessed with clips of Mahler performing the Emily Blunt role in an unauthorized musical version of the Devil Wears Prada. Also years before a legitimate stage musical adaptation of that film. And obviously she would sing Vogue at the beginning. She'd get hit by a car and sing racquetball while brandishing a crutch and bouncing up and down on an inflatable piece of exercise equipment. And such was the insincere comedy tone of these shows. And I believe it was Constantine who at one point pitched to the others, I know what our next show is going to be. We're going to do Titanic. But obviously with the songbook of Celine Dion, with Marla playing that famous character from the James Cameron film Celine. And there are so many great stories about the early days of them writing this show and unexpectedly gaining the rights to Celine's music. It was workshopped and pitched on the West Coast. It then had a little tryout presentation in New York, which spawned an Off Broadway run. They transferred to a larger Off Broadway venue, the space where I saw the show for the first time time, which ran long enough to go through a couple of replacement casts, by which time, not unlike many other little plucky shows that could, it had become a little bigger than its original cast and creatives. And in fact, before too long and prior to any indication of a Broadway run, there would be multiple international productions announced, including in Australia, also in Canada, where Celine Dion is a huge beloved icon, likewise in Paris, France, where they feel similarly about her, and a run in London's West End. Now, this icon credit, and I don't know to what extent this is true, but in my head it is with being one of the moments that really legitimized Titanique, because at this point it had been very off Broadway, very edgy, very countercultural, even as the brand of the show itself, while sailing figuratively around the world, had become a little more commercial. And it made sense, having conquered theatrical frontiers beyond New York, that they would want to bring the show to London, this other metropolis of theatre and musical theatre. However, there is a key difference between the New York theatre scene and the London theatre scene, which is that in London we don't have those same kind of sizable financially viable and cool enough off West End spaces. There are a couple, I don't want to discredit them, but they are for the most part much more fringe, much smaller, and not really capable of accommodating a show like Titanique. What we do have, though, is a number of actual West End theaters which are considerably smaller than even the smallest Broadway house. So the show found itself at the Criterion Theatre, where all of a sudden it was not playing in London's historic West End, but also eligible for the Olivier Awards, where they made the smart decision to opt into the category of Best Entertainment or comedy play rather than Best New Musical, making it objectively a lot easier for the show to not only earn a nomination, but actually win an Olivier Award Little Statuette, named for the very prestigious stage actor Sir Lawrence Olivier, which was then presented to Mahler, Constantine and Tai Enforcing. I think at this point the idea that Titanique can actually be this legitimate thing and really justifying the soon to be announced trip to Broadway. Yes, Titanique would swim upstream to midtown Manhattan and open at not just any Broadway house, but in a relatively quiet Broadway season, especially for new musicals, the St. James, of all places, where it is playing now. And I tell you all of this for two reasons, because its origins speak to both the brand of the show that endures with which it arrives on Broadway and which it is working very well to maintain, in addition to a lot a little secret as to why the material itself works. First, let's talk about the brand, which is one that it had been curating over several years, attaining a cult queer audience, such that by the time the subjectively difficult to market concept was arriving in the most challenging commercial theatrical space in the world, 2026 Broadway, there were already many individuals who knew what this show was. Marla Mindel had already won an award for playing Celine Dion off Broadway. They had also won an Olivier. They had this winning combination of technically legit, legitimized, while still utterly underground, and crucially, with a significant enough gaggle of already interested gays through whom cultural word of mouth permeates both onto the Internet and the streets of Hell's Kitchen. Of course, the show had only slightly expanded its original production up to this point. And when they arrived on Broadway, they knew that it would have to get significantly bigger in order to justify this much larger auditorium and the inherent expectations of Broadway, both from the perspectives of people like me, who were curious to see what they were going to do with this kind of an opportunity, and the folks who paid significantly less to see it off Broadway. Who would be expecting more bang for their buck. And so, like a debatably capacious wooden door in the North Atlantic Ocean, there arose the question, is Titanique gonna work on Broadway? Let's consider the answer by talking about how the show works, period.
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- [10:48]
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- [11:55]
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Now, I left you on a bit of a cliffhanger there. Don't worry, I'm circling back to it because we need to talk about what Titanique actually is. And it is, to some extent, an adaptation of the iconic James Cameron film titanic from the 1990s. Only the events of the film are recalled and portrayed through the deliberately distorted lens of one of its alleged passengers, Celine Dion. Essentially, we open with a handful of visitors to the Titanic Museum, and a mysterious woman covered in trash bags reveals herself to be the iconic Canadian songstress Celine Dion, who, in addition to having famously contributed to the film's soundtrack, insists that she was actually a passenger on Titanique more than a century ago, in spite of the fact that that would require her to be long since deceased. And as she musically insists, I'm alive, I'm alive. Live, live. And this is exactly what the rest of the show is. Celine Dion is our narrator, walking us through the events of the film, the love story of Jack and Rose, and the characters surrounding them from her own dizzying, half remembered perspective, which feels objectively ridiculous, and that's part of its charm. But there's also a cleverness to it as well, and it speaks to the circumstances in which this was written. I'm circling back to that original point. I told you we'd get there. Because you have three close friends writing together, watching this movie, trying to figure out where they can put in Celine Dion's songs, coming to the realization that she needs to be a character in it and that that's funny. But they're sat there drinking wine, presumably trying to make each other laugh. And what the show manages to encapsulate, possibly deliberately, but possibly just as a byproduct of this very process, is the fun and the wit and the charm of sitting around with your friends and watching a film that you half remember while drinking a bottlene a box of wine. And so many of the jokes written into this script speak directly to that kind of an experience, one that I assume many of us have had with our own friends, watching a film that we love to make fun of together. When the ship's captain is simply referred to as Victor Garber because he comes on screen and you'd be like, oh, my gosh, it's Victor Garber. Or when a character is described as looking a bit like Luigi from Mario Kart, and that's the extent of his development through that, because he doesn't really matter for the rest of the film. There's a little overlap here with the brilliance of Corsicola's O Mary, which uses this vague historical premise and characterization as a springboard for utter queer lunacy. That is what Titanique does with Titanic as well. And the narrative of the film is, I guess, a useful anchor for the show to have to keep it from drowning in its own ridiculousness. But there's also a real conceptual clarity to what we're doing this entire time. Enough people know the vague outline of the film of Titanic or have seen it or know it well. And we know that every few minutes we're going to get a different Celine Dion song. We figure out who she is, this sort of caricature of her at the beginning, a very Celine Dion sort of parody figure, and we understand almost immediately the kind of fun that we're in for. Previously, I've said my favorite kind of comedy is the kind which is simultaneously very stupid and also very intelligent. And I have an update on that. And, you know, when people describe themselves as, like, socially liberal but fiscally conservative, what I think is this is a show that is structurally intelligent and functionally stupid. And that, again, is where much of its brilliance lies. It is a smartly crafted silliness. And heed this warning. There can be a real danger in sitting around and writing stuff with a group of friends that aims only to make each other laugh. Where this proves winningly relatable is to root so much of its comedy in pop culture. References which range from the more recognizable like two characters when the ship is sinking having to lip sync for their life boats in an homage to RuPaul's Drag Race, or the more niche and specific, like that one clip of the news anchor making a mistake live on air and saying she's gay. Sorry, she's blind. And details like that have always served to connect the show very meaningfully to a queer audience. So how does all of this work on Broadway in a bigger commercial setting? While co writer and director Tai Blue has enlarged the production, a couple of references have been tweaked so that things can play a little more broadly. Someone had said to me that it doesn't really feel like a show for the queer community anymore, and I disagree with that. A couple of references have been made maybe a little more widely understandable, which is not necessarily a bad thing. And listen, on the Sunday night when I saw the show, they still nodded to Luann from the Real Housewives of New York and I was the only person who woo watching the show as I was the way it was meant to be seen while drinking a spiked slush beverage from a plastic cup. But also, like RuPaul's Drag Race and Halloween before it, a thing that was meant to be for gay people can also be enjoyed by all manner of other individuals, including well meaning tourists, drunk straight women and confused individuals who thought they were seeing the Maury Yeston show. The show also boasts an expansive revitalized set design from Gabriel Heine Evansson and Grace Laubacher for Iron Bloom Creative Production brought to life via dynamic lighting design from Paige Ciba. The joke at the end of the transferred Off Broadway production and the ongoing West End production was thank you for coming to see Titanique on the set of Anything Goes because it was so symmetrically nautical and sort of brilliant white. That was an already updated version of an earlier adaptable joke. My favorite iteration of which was when I saw the show in Chicago and it was Titanique across the street from the Cheesecake Factory delivered with pathos. I don't know that I think the Broadway one is is funny just in the rhythm of the punchline because they're now calling it Titanique on the set of the Voice and it doesn't look Unlike those kind of set designs for like, TV competition or performance shows like the Voice or America's Got Talent or who Wants to Be a Millionaire. I just think, and this is possibly from the perspective of people who are expecting a certain rhythm because they know the old version of the joke, that it doesn't sound as funny. And that you could also really lean into the Broadway of it all by acknowledging a much more prestigious former tenant of the St James Theatre and be like, thank you for coming to see Titanique in the same theater where this played. Isn't that silly? But essentially, and though for years I had been skeptical about this very notion, I think the show made the journey from Off Broadway to Broadway pretty seamlessly. And one of the biggest reasons why is one of the underrated tools in its arsenal, which are the Celine Dion songs. You know, we think about the characterization of these performances and the moments of improv comedy in the show when we think about Titanique as well as the just ridiculous premise. But it's easy to forget that this is also a jukebox musical delivering big, punchy, crowd pleasing hits. The songs are great songs, which Celine herself performed on large stages in Las Vegas. There is nothing subtle about this material. Songs like I Drove All Night, as well as the epic anthem that is My Heart Will Go on, fill these auditoria naturally and inherently. And the comedy of the thing is broad enough that it will stretch to fill whatever space you put it in. There's always been something of a kinship between Titanique and British pantomime, which works on a large stage. There's not a lot of subtlety to it. In other words, the nature of the score makes it easy to audibly amplify, but the nature of the comedy tone also makes it easy to dramatically amplify. A big enduring question, though, and one way in which the show seems to be trying to find a slightly broader audience, is what is this cast like? So the original Broadway company of Titanique, as they have become, is a composite of faces, old and new. Two of the cast members are of course, also two of the show's writers, Marla Mindel and Constantine Rasooli. Marla returns to the role of Celine Dion, for which she has won awards. She is so brilliantly suited to this, having been written around her very specific talent. She has this piercing high belt, but also is an unhinged comedy diva whose version of Celine at this point need not bear the closest similarity to Celine herself. It's not about giving the most accurate impersonation so much as it is crafting this beloved larger than life character who endearingly manages to combine a desperation to be at the center of attention in every moment, hilariously shoving her face in between Jack and Rose and the moments when they're about about to share a passionate kiss. This being part of again, deceptively clever direction from Ty Blue and I'll say no more about it with a really charming capacity for self deprecating humor. She will both tell us about her extraordinarily beautiful singing voice and then she will play one of the violinists who continue to play on the ship as it slowly sinks, creating cat screech reminiscent violin sound effects with her voice, as well as reminding the audience at every opportunity how much love she has for all of the people in the world. It's a character you can't help but fall in love with. And just when you think you've seen the full range of Mahler's talents, you arrive at this moment in the show that has attained a lot of popularity on social media, during which she obligates the performers playing Jack and Rose to carry out an improvised scene in which they mostly lip sync to her dialogue or occasionally song or rap. And it's been everything from Republican takedowns to entirely improvised shows. The night I saw it, the Lost Boys was opening on Broadway and it was an homage to that show with Jack telling Rose like I think I am a vampire, but also I might be gay. These sections can vary wildly different. Selenes have taken very different approaches to them. They can be conspicuously long and amount to big things by this point generally she seems to have them down to a science and they almost always include the band being in on it and creating some sort of background music while she does some kind of a performance and gets Constantine Rasooli. If you get the two of them both in the show together, there's a brilliant understanding between the two, them having been friends and co stars for a very long time where they're just utterly in sync. But it's a really gorgeous turn from Marla Mindel, who in her previous Broadway turn in like Rodgers and Hammerstein's Cinderella or Sister act, never really got to use the full extent of her powers and her skills. And Marl has been very celebrated for this. She's a Tony Award nominee this year for her performance. Constantine, I think, is underrated as Jack and this earnest yet rugged romantic quality that he brings to him. There's a beautiful naivety infused through all of his line readings as well. When Rose takes a look at his sketchbook and he turns bashful as she is sort of taken aback and says to him, you really see people, Jack. And there's a stirring sweep of music as she turns it around to reveal these stick figure cat drawings. One of the smart choices I think they've made in creating a comedy based on a story depicting this great tragedy of human history has to do with character and a lack of danger or threat or stakes, particularly even in in the plot's most intense final moments. And so everyone on the ship is sort of reduced to a mutual childishness, including Rose's fiance Cal, played by another previous Titanique cast member. He is John Riddle and he's doing an exceptional job of metrosexual villainy. Really has this part down. The other returning principal cast member also being one of the show's producers, Juan Frankie Grande, who is playing Victor Garber. And I'd heard some criticism of Frankie as Victor Garber. Certainly they cast this part in various different ways. Some people actually feel closer to Victor Garber, others feel nothing like him whatsoever. They've had drag queens in this role. They've had Broadway fan favorites in this role. I don't know that they've necessarily figured out what does and doesn't work in this track. He has a great song to sing. He becomes something of a gay cliche. Frankie Grande does all of the that very well and I thought sounded pretty great actually singing I Drove All Night, which is one of my favourite Celine Dion songs. And I've seen performers better and worse suited to this role. And in all examples, there's not that much that you can do with this material. It's just not where the winning moments are. A track that does have them though, and a performer who is finding them is original West End cast member and Olivier Award winner for this role, Leighton Williams, who has joined the Broadway company to play the iceberg, the seaman. And I am not only thrilled as a West End theatre goer that Layton is having the opportunity to do this part on Broadway and bring his particular very Broadway ready triple threat skill set to New York. I also think it's a great choice for the show. Not only do they get to say, oh, we also have the Olivier Award winning performance of Leighton Williams, who has also been nominated for a Tony Award, an indication of how good he is in the this role. But also it is a genuinely showstopping performance that he is giving. And he's already very funny in the introductory scene when he is the tour guide guiding everyone through this museum before spotting an ex boyfriend in the audience and getting choked up about it emotionally. He also does a great job dueting with Seline on Beauty and the Beast as Pebo Bryson, a song that extraordinarily they were able to get the rights to. But the best is yet to come come because the iceberg famously struck by the Titanic is personified in this musical as Tina Turner in an ice blue Tina Turner wig. And Layton gets the characterization, the attitude, the vocals, but more than anything else the dance physicality, the indefatigable energy of Tina Turner down to a T. Two T's in fact, and that is what makes this a show stopping moment. It is so so sensationally good what Leighton is able to do on this stage. Thrilling to watch and I think even better than it was in the West End because this bigger Broadway space begets an even bigger performance. And that is something that Leighton Williams is going to bring to you.
- [26:12]
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You're listening to this podcast, so I know you've got a curious mind. Here's a helpful fact you might not know yet. Drivers who switch and save with Progressive save over $900 on average. Pop over to progressive.com, answer some questions and you'll get a quick quote with discounts that are easy to come by. In fact, 99% of their auto customers earn at least one discount. Visit progressive.com and see if you can enjoy a little cash back. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates national average 12 month savings by $946 by new customers surveyed who saved with Progressive between June 2024 and May 2025. Potential savings will vary.
- [26:48]
B
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- [27:48]
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In.
- [27:56]
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Now, those are all of the cast members who have done Titanique before. They are also joined by three new principal cast members who have some degree of fame beyond Broadway. We have recording artist Deborah Cox. We have award winning star of stage and screen, Jim Parsons, best known for playing Sheldon in the Big Bang Theory. And we have screen star Melissa Barrera, who I know from being one of these standout performers from the in the Heights movie and a lot of other people know for objectively more famous films. And I'm going to talk about her last. Let's start with Deborah. Deborah is not necessarily casting that completely makes sense for the role of Molly Brown, who more so than anything else is a parody of Kathy Bates who played the role in the film. And that is where a lot of the humor comes from for this character. This is not Deborah Cox first musical theatre role, but she hasn't really been closely associated with comedy. And this is not easy material to make really funny as well because she also doesn't have the really great punch lines. And so Deborah Cox is there eventually getting to convert the ceiling into a sunroof, which is to say she blows it off with her performance of All By Myself. Does a great job. Not an easy sing, but prior to that she's just kind of going through the motion. Seems to be having a fun enough time on stage. Isn't difficult to watch, but isn't really doing that much with the material. And to her credit, bit of a weird fit for her, which is kind of what I'd been anticipating with Jim Parsons. Though I had pretty high expectations because Jim has for years been a really accomplished, celebrated stage performer. I had seen him on stage in Mother Play and he's really fantastic in that environment. I was surprised then that he seems a little less than fully comfortable in Titanique. And I don't know whether it's for his own benefit or whether he's being to some degree inhibited by the fact that he's kind of doing the role with training wheels. What I mean by this is he is playing the role of Ruth Rose's mother, who is a controlling nightmare and who doesn't really sing, but whose defining moment in the show is an extended, often improvised rant monologue in which Ruth screams at her daughter, often breaks the fourth wall and screams at members of the audience. It culminates in her assaulting members of the band and this crescendo of passionate aggression. And Jim characterizes that, funnily enough, Jim Parsons gets comedy. This isn't a surprise, I think though, after so many years of doing TV comedy and after more than enough stage performances, you would have thought that Jim Parsons could do a Little more with this rather than lean back on what they have devised here, which is not improvised, but which is just a series of little musical gags, like a little rendition of Rose's turn, but about Ruth instead. And it's nowhere near as funny as what Carmelani has been doing in the West End. What Stephen Guarino did in the original West End Company, what Rob Lindley was doing in the Chicago production. A highlight of that production, Rob Lindley, included the entire Julia Sugarbaker monologue from Designing Women. The one that finishes with. And that, Marjorie, so that you might know and your children might know is the Night that the Lights Went out in Georgia. All of that, that entire thing into the show. And it was hilarious. And you would have thought that that would have really worked more so for Jim Parker. I think if Jim's gonna have a specific road map of this is what you're gonna do at this point in the show every single night. At least let it be things that make sense for him. And for the only Big Bang Theory joke to be a fart joke just feels weird. Like, fair enough, some of the people who bought tickets that afternoon in Times Square might want some kind of a nod to Sheldon because they're very confused about what it is that they're looking at. But that doesn't really feel like the way to do it. I refuse to believe that Jim Parsons isn't comfortable enough in this arena to have a little bit more fun and flexibility here. And I think would be giving a better performance if he could because all of the scripted stuff is pretty well played. Not the best take on Ruth that I've ever seen, but in terms of trying to find a celebrity name who also works for the show and helps it retain its sensibility rather than gentrifying it through stunt casting, it kind of works. The best new find for the show though is absolutely Melissa Barrera as well Rose. And she needs to do 5 to 10 more musicals immediately after this because she is clearly really understanding of the comedy and the way in which all of this works. There's only so much that Rose can do because she is this doe eyed ingenue type and often the butt of as many jokes as she is participating in. But Melissa evidences throughout her performance a real innate understanding of how she serves the funniest every time that she's on stage. But also she just gives genuinely good ingenue. We already knew she could sing, we already knew she could dance, but she translates this into a much bigger theatricality so, so well. And I I just need her to be in so many more shows because she's got a real gift for it and she's brilliant to watch on stage. Those then have been my thoughts thoughts about Titanique's journey to Broadway. I think if you've loved this show anywhere else, you're going to continue to love it at the St. James. If you have never given it a chance, I urge you to do so. It is more sincerely well crafted than you may expect. And I think as we see more and more of these sort of parody shows attaining commercial viability, it may represent some of the future of musical theater. But my number one favorite thing about it is always going to be that this show was created in a space of joy and laughter which is sort of conjured and rekindled every night on stage and shared with everyone in the audience, which now that it's on Broadway, is more people than ever before. Go and sail your way to happiness with Titanique. That is the end of my review. I've told you what I thought and I would love to know what you thought. Please let me know in the comments section down below. And if you would like to hear more of my review, Broadway or otherwise, make sure to subscribe right here on YouTube or go and check out the ones I've shared already. Thank you so much for listening. I hope you enjoyed I have been Mickey Jo and as always, I hope that everyone is staying safe and that you 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.
- [34:30]
A
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- [35:06]
B
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