Titanic: A New Musical OBC (...much needed 2020 appreciation thread)

[MlleDaae]

Posted: 10/1/20 at 11:13am

In times of trouble, I seem to gravitate towards the Titanic: A New Musical OBC recording. Besides the stunning "before they were stars" cast, the music hits me in a way that I end up singing the whole show to myself sans accompaniment.

No Moon is usually the song that pops into my head. I love the way it transitions into Autumn (mad crush on Ted Sperling's voice). Of course The Proposal / The Night Was Alive is beautiful. As far as lyrics go, "I will be a proper person... people will look up to me" from Lady's Maid is another earworm that seems to rear its head every few months.

Decades ago, I was told the Lunt-Fontanne was deeply haunted up until Titanic took the stage and that the musical must have brought some sort of closer to the resident spirits. Can anyone attest to this?

Anywho.. happy October everyone. Stay safe.

 

 

[JBroadway]

Posted: 10/1/20 at 11:40am

Totally agree with you! I especially appreciate you highlighting those specific songs - the ones you mentioned also happen to be some of my absolutely favorites from that score. "No Moon" and "The Proposal / Night was Alive" in particular. The latter is just transcendentally beautiful - possibly some of the most strikingly beautiful bits of music ever written for musical theatre.

The former ("No Moon" is constructed in such a fascinating way. A series of short scenes all sung in fairly loose recitative, with each scene getting a single line that has a one-off striking melody, often with a surprising and beautiful minor note ("No thank you, I'd rather freeze," "Life's too short for that, me boy-o," "No, Sir. It appears to be a flat calm." etc.) and all of that punctuated by the gorgeous "No moon, no wind" refrain.

However, I'd also add "Barrett's Song" into the mix of the some of the best songs in that exquisite score. 

And Lady's Maid impressively manages to include a mild satire of how these people have such a relatively low bar for their dreams (not unlike "Somewhere That's Green), without being cynical or condescending. It criticizes the American Dream, while simultaneously making the audience feel how beautiful and romantic it is through the eyes of these people. 

It's a shame that people often write this show off before really trying it. I hear a lots of casual theatre fans making jokes about the very notion of "Titanic the Musical," and how it must be bad,"just 'cause!" And how "Titanic the Musical won the Tony?? Must have been a weak year lol!" Obviously everyone has the right to dislike the show if they know the material, but it seems to me that most of the people who make fun have never even listened to the cast album. 

[Jarethan]

Posted: 10/1/20 at 12:08pm

I love listening to most of the score, and can still get goosebumps as the beginning 'scene' -- a number of songs -- rise to the crescendo.  

I was disappointed with the show both times I saw it.  I think the reason was that there were too many characters, to the point where you didn't care about any of them as individuals.  Don't know if this was typical, but both performances were greeted with tepid applause at the curtain call...I remember thinking -- and I had good seats in the front mezzanine -- that they were not applauding the individual performers much because they couldn't tell some of them apart.

The OCR may have suffered, but I always have felt that the show would have benefitted as an evening's entertainment if it focused on fewer characters and got into them more; not suggesting the Joe and Rose focus of the movie, but along those lines.

 

[suzycat]

Posted: 10/1/20 at 12:41pm

Thank you for starting this thread! This show is very special to me, I think I saw it 3 or 4 times. I was in middle school at the time so I have particularly emotional memories!

I enjoyed this recent interview with Alma Cuervo on Behind the Curtain: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/behind-the-curtain-broadways-living-legends-podcast/id1080144159?i=1000491171517

[blaxx]

Posted: 10/1/20 at 2:25pm

I think Yeston is the most underrated musical theatre composer. He writes amazing music.

[uncageg]

Posted: 10/1/20 at 3:01pm

blaxx said: "I think Yeston is the most underrated musical theatre composer. He writes amazing music."

 

I actually sat next to him the evening I saw "Death Takes A Holiday" in previews. Glad I enjoyed it!

I really need to sit and listen to "Titanic" all the way through.

 

Updated On: 10/5/20 at 03:01 PM

[MlleDaae]

Posted: 10/5/20 at 12:40pm

I'd like to point out how I had no clue the OBC Murdoch was played by David Costabile until I watched the reunion performance and screamed OMFG it's GALE from BREAKING BAD!!!!!

 

JBroadway - Wow! I absolutely love your review. Do you do this for a living? Perfectly put:

"And Lady's Maid impressively manages to include a mild satire of how these people have such a relatively low bar for their dreams (not unlike "Somewhere That's Green), without being cynical or condescending. It criticizes the American Dream, while simultaneously making the audience feel how beautiful and romantic it is through the eyes of these people."

Jarethan - The two times you saw Titanic, was it the Broadway production or regional? I'll admit, though they try the best they can, many regional productions have landed flat for me due to the set and blocking. Hats off for trying; that set is an intimidating build.

suzycat - Thank you for this! Gonna give it a watch.

blaxx - RIGHT!!!? Even Phantom has some beautiful pieces! Haven't had the pleasure of seeing it live. That's Yeston/Kopit's Phantom, not ALW's POTO for anyone confused... (PS ..did you know Kopit wrote the POTO miniseries starring Charles Dance?? Love love love...)

uncageg - Whaaa? I haven't listened to "Death Takes a Holiday" yet. What did you think? Did Yeston give any reactions during the preview you saw?

 

 

[itsjustmejonhotmailcom]

Posted: 10/5/20 at 12:51pm

There was talk of the production from the Signature Theatre coming in; given the accusations against Eric Schaeffer a while back, has that now sunk?

[JBroadway]

Posted: 10/5/20 at 12:58pm

MlleDaae said: "Do you do this for a living?"

 

Haha, very kind! I wish! Just a hobby, for the time being. I do keep a personal journal with thoughts like that on every show I see, and I write posts on here, but that's the extent of it.

 

itsjustmejonhotmailcom said: "There was talk of the production from the Signature Theatre coming in; given the accusations against Eric Schaeffer a while back, has that now sunk?"

 

Last I heard, this production was struggling to get a theatre, and was pretty much dead in the water even before COVID. I'm sure the accusations against Schaeffer is just the final nail in the coffin. I would've loved to see it though! 

[Owen22]

Posted: 10/5/20 at 1:00pm

itsjustmejonhotmailcom said: "There was talk of the production from the Signature Theatre coming in; given the accusations against Eric Schaeffer a while back, has that now sunk?"

The excellent Southwark Playhouse production in London which toured extensively there was also supposed to come in, it even got a run in Canada before the producers pulled out.

 

[Jarethan]

Posted: 10/5/20 at 3:02pm

Jarethan - The two times you saw Titanic, was it the Broadway production or regional? I'll admit, though they try the best they can, many regional productions have landed flat for me due to the set and blocking. Hats off for trying; that set is an intimidating build.
 

I saw it on Broadway, once right after it won the Tony, the next when it became clear that the show was not going to have an extended run.  Business dropped pretty suddenly, I was going to be in NYC, so I figured 'it's now or never.'  At both performances, the applause were much louder at the end of the first cycle of songs than at the end of the show.

I think that the scores for Titanic and especially Nine make me wish he had been more prolific.  Given his current age -- 74 -- I doubt we will see much more from him, and that's a shame.  That said, I saw Phantom at the Papermill Playhouse. Neither the show nor the score made any impression on me...I have never heard a recording to make me question that original assessment...don't know if there is one.  I thought a couple of the songs he wrote for Grand Hotel were very good.  I did not see Death Takes a Holiday, but the OCR made no impression whatsoever.  Wondering whether FOR ME he is sorta like Ahrens and Flaherty.  I think the score for Ragtime is one of the gresatest in the last30 or so years.  I have enjoyed the score to Once on this Island quite a bit.  Yet I have not liked another single score that they have written.  

 

 

[uncageg]

Posted: 10/5/20 at 3:14pm

MlleDaae said:


uncageg - Whaaa? I haven't listened to "Death Takes a Holiday" yet. What did you think? Did Yeston give any reactions during the preview you saw?"

I enjoyed the show. I just listened to it recently all the way through while cooking dinner (I like music playing when I cook). He seemed to be pleased with the show but like any creator you could tell he was still working on things in his mind. I told him I enjoyed it. It was hard not to watch him for reactions during the show though!

 

[Ravenclaw]

Posted: 10/5/20 at 5:00pm

I've seen Titanic performed live three times--the first at Baldwin-Wallace in 2012, the second from Griffin Theatre in 2014, and the third at Northwestern in 2015. Were there not a pandemic, I would likely be seeing it twice more this year, once at Milwaukee Rep and once at Porchlight Music Theatre. Titanic is a favorite of mine, and it's performed rarely enough that it's a show I will travel for. 

Of the three productions I've seen, though the two college productions were very big and featured full orchestras, the chamber version that Griffin put on in a 100-seat theatre was by far my favorite. There was enough to evoke the scale of the story, but that scale never dwarfed the stories of the people, which is what the show is really about. One moment I remember distinctly (which I suspect was borrowed from the earlier Southwark Playhouse production, but I don't know for sure) is in Alice's introductions of the wealthy women, there was just one woman who played all six women, and there was an actor taking a picture and she would freeze in a pose, and then someone would come one and swap out another extravagant hat and she would pose differently for another camera effect as she became another woman. It was a simple, fun theatrical trick, but it did a lot for the storytelling. In the 40+ actor version, you get a big costume parade in this moment, and you struggle to absorb all the frantic exposition about many characters who hardly make an appearance after the opening sequence. In the chamber version, where all these people are played by the same actress in quick succession, you understand that these people are all basically the same, and the moment is not exposition about six wealthy women, it's exposition about who Alice is, this second-class woman who has memorized all these biographies and can't wait to get a glimpse of them all. Moments like these which used simple theatrical tricks kept the focus on the humanity of the characters and made that chamber version feel more alive than the bigger versions of the show.

I'm a big fan of Maury Yeston--his scores for Titanic and Nine are among Broadway's best, and his work on Grand Hotel and Death Takes a Holiday are really special. I also adore his song cycle December Songs and have listened to Laura Osnes's recording countless times. He seems to take a long time on each of his shows, but I would rather have the five great Yeston scores we have than twenty pieces of average quality.