SRO Theatre Company Presents TITANIC The Musical

SRO Theatre Company's 2017-2018 season, it's 33rd, continues with Titanic The Musical, Maury Yeston and Peter Stone's stunning musical about the ill-fated ocean liner and its passengers.

The production, directed by SRO Theatre Artistic Director Kristofer Green, will play the
Columbus Performing Arts Center's Van Fleet Theatre beginning with a preview performance on Thursday, February 15, 2018. The Tony Award musical officially opens Friday, February 16 and will run through Sunday, February 25, 2018. Audio description for people who are blind or hearing impaired will be available at the Sunday, February 25th performance. To reserve a headset for the audio description, patrons should call
(614) 427-3324 or e-mail srotheatregm@gmail.com at least two weeks before the performance to secure availability. Patrons taking advantage of this accessibility feature are advised to arrive by 1:15 p.m. for pre-performance program notes.

Based on the real life passengers and crew of the RMS Titanic, the musical won 5 Tony Awards including Best Musical and Best Score. The story focuses on the hopes and aspirations of the souls aboard the greatest ship in the world. Unaware of the fate that awaits them, the Third Class immigrants dream of a better life in America, the newly-enfranchised Second Class dream of achieving the lifestyles of the rich and famous, and the millionaire Barons of the First Class dream of their hegemony lasting forever.

Titanic The Musical is a dramatized and partially fictionalized story of events that took place in the final hours of April 14, 1912 aboard the RMS Titanic. On her maiden voyage from Southampton to New York, the unsinkable ship collided with an iceberg and slowly sank. It was one of the most tragic disasters of the 20th Century. 1517 men, women and children lost their lives.

The discovery of the wreck of the RMS Titanic in 1985 attracted Yeston's interest in writing a musical about the famous disaster. "What drew me to the project was the positive aspects of what the ship represented - 1) humankind's striving after great artistic works and similar technological feats, despite the possibility of tragic failure, and 2) the dreams of the passengers on board: 3rd Class, to immigrate to America for a better life; 2nd Class, to live a leisured lifestyle in imitation of the upper classes; 1st Class, to maintain their privileged positions forever.

The collision with the iceberg dashed all of these dreams simultaneously, and the subsequent transformation of character of the passengers and crew had, it seemed to me, the potential for great emotional and musical expression onstage."

Stone and Yeston knew that the idea was an unusual subject for a musical. "I think if you don't have that kind of daring damn-the-torpedoes, you shouldn't be in this business. It's the safe sounding shows that often don't do well. You have to dare greatly, and I really want to stretch the bounds of the kind of expression in musical theater," Yeston explained.

Yeston saw the story as unique to turn-of-the-century British culture, with its rigid social class system and its romanticization of progress through technology. "In order to depict that on the stage, because this is really a very English show, I knew I would have to have a color similar to the one found in the music of the great composers at that time, like Elgar or Vaughan Williams; this was for me an opportunity to bring in the musical theater an element of the symphonic tradition that I think we really haven't had before. That was very exciting."

The musical premiered on Broadway on April 23, 1997 and ran for 804 performances before closing on March 21, 1999.

Titanic The Musical features a talented local cast that includes Jesse Daniel Trieger (Frederick Barrett), Kristen Basore (Kate McGowan), Keith Robinson (Captain EJ Smith), Brandon Maldonado (Thomas Andrews), William Macke (Frederick Fleet/Benjamin Guggenheim), Bill Hafner (J. Bruce Ismay), Paul Lee (Isidor Strauss) and Jack Miller (Jim Farrell).

FULL CASTING
Frederick Barrett - Jesse Daniel Trieger
Harold Bride - Nick Van Atta
Frederick Fleet/Benjamin Guggenheim - William Macke
Wallace Hartley/Joseph Bell - Adam James Cooper
Thomas Andrews/The Major - Brandon Maldonado
J. Bruce Ismay - Bill Hafner
Captain E.J. Smith - Keith Robinson
Kate McGowan -Kristen Basore
Jim Farrell/John Thayer/Boxhall -Jack Miller
Murdoch/J.J. Astor - Thor Collard
Alice Beane - Ciera Bierbaugh
Edgar Beane/Lightoller - Scott Clay
Henry Etches/Pitman -Weston McAloney
Charlotte Drake Cardoza - Susan Gellman
Isidor Strauss - Paul Lee
Ida Strauss - Wendy Cohen
Charles Clarke/George Widener - Tom Murdock
Caroline Neville - Taryn Hammond
Eleanor Widener - Emma Macesich
Marion Thayer - Mina Foreman
Kate Mullins/Mme. Aubert - Grace Rinehart
Kate Murphey/Madeleine Astor - Kara Hancock
Bellboy/Frank Carlson/J. Rogers - Johnny Robison
Hitchens/Bandsman Bricoux - Kevin Tate
Edith Corse Evans - Susan Loar
Jack Thayer - Eli Wilson

Committed to producing both classic and contemporary works that break cultural and
generational boundaries, SRO Theatre Company continues to operate as one of Columbus'oldest not-for-profit theaters. In SRO's 33 year history, it has won international acclaim for the quality of its productions, its depth and diversity and the excellence of its many community programs.