Home from seeing the Fathom events presentation of the UK tour of Maury Yeston's Titanic. Here is my review that I posted on Facebook. I really loved it.
Just a quick review of the UK tour of "Titanic-The Musical" (music and lyrics by Maury Yeston) showing in the theatres this week through Fathom events.
Full disclosure, I did not see the Original Broadway production In 1997 (which opened about 8 months before the movie and they have nothing to do with each other, except the obvious). I did, however, see the first National Tour two times In 1999. I was very turned off by the tour. The set was really bad. "Titanic" was one of those musicals that opened toward the end of the "Mega-musical" era and it was really important to see the ship sinking. (Spoiler - sorry). I guess on Broadway the set was different and the sinking eventually worked (it's on youtube... still need to watch It) but it was so humorous in a bad way on the tour that it basically took me out of the story.
The production I saw today did not put the emphasis on the sinking, but more about the story. However, in Act Two (after the ship hits the iceberg at the end of Act One - spoiler again!) just by using the score and the script, the director created a sense of tension that you really knew something was wrong in the story, and you didn't need to actually see the sinking ship, it was so well done. It's nice to see a show like "Titanic" that relies on the material and not the set or any sort of visual. I was quite emotionally Involved to the very end. The only thing I missed were the use of the original Jonathan Tunick orchestrations. However, the reduced orchestration was great, just took a few numbers to get used to the sound.
Hopefully, people will see this and realize that "Titanic" is worth producing and can work in a scaled down production. Just trust the material, it's all there. And everyone knows how it's going to end (spoiler again). Oh, and Broadway HD was listed as a producer, so if you wait long enough, I bet it ends up there as well.
