A Beautiful Melancholy: TITANIC Stars Explore the Appeal of Yeston's Work

“TITANIC is ultimately uplifting, but a large part of the show sits in a melancholy place.  It is a beautiful melancholy and it gives the audience a moment of hope and joy.” Maine State Music Theatre Artistic Director, Curt Dale Clark, is commenting on the company’s 2023 season opener, Maury Yeston and Peter Stone’s majestic musical, TITANIC, now playing its final week at the Pickard Theater.

Clark is part of the first PEEK BEHIND THE CURTAIN panel discussion that includes some of TITANIC’s stars, Linda Balgord, Michael Nigro, and Carolyn Anne Miller in conversation with BWW Regional Maine Editor, Carla Maria Verdino-Süllwold, who have assembled at Brunswick’s Curtis Memorial Library on June 14 to explore the appeal of Yeston’s work and to share insights about performing and producing this epic show.

Clark starts the conversation by observing that “to have a show of this size and scale in the first slot has been a scary experience. The cost of the technical elements and the large cast would have been prohibitive if it were not a co-production with the Fulton Theatre in Lancaster, PA.  But I am super happy with the scope of the show and very proud of everyone involved.  Every time I watch it, I see new things.”

For Clark, Yeston “is a master of choral music and a master of melody, and he grounds the score with a superstar book writer like Peter Stone.” Clark notes that casting the thirty exquisitely harmonized voices for the show was “a bit of luck.  Because in the old days you could spend time at auditions seeing if voices blended, but today the process is so expensive and so much different.  Luckily we are blessed in TITANIC with a cast that can sing choral music beautifully.”

Balgord, who plays Ida Straus and whose resumé includes numerous Broadway leading roles, among them SUNSET BOULEVARD, CATS, and PHANTOM OF THE OPERA, feels that Maury Yeston’s work – a bit like Andrew Lloyd Webber’s – “is filled with beautiful melodies and manages to be both grand and intimate.”

Nigro, who portrays Barrett, explains how his performance in TITANIC has been an experience that has organically grown from his two other most recent stage experiences: playing Fyedka in FIDDLER ON THE ROOF at the 3500-seat Lyric Opera of Chicago and then again off-Broadway at the 400-seat New Stages. “At the Lyric, I had to make sure I was opening myself out to the audience and giving these big grand notes, and then with Joel Grey [at the Yiddish National Theater], everything was more intimate. So coming to TITANIC, I took all of that and combined it.  I try to make some moments a little more grand and some more intimate.”

Each of the cast members has some favorite musical and book moments that make the show special to them. Miller thinks “the opening and closing choral numbers are pretty incredible,” and says she loves to sing her number ‘Lady’s Maid in America’ because it is all about hope.” Her favorite book scene is the poignant one in which Ida and Isador Strauss decide to remain together and go down with the ship. Balgord concurs about the opening and closing grand concerted pieces and says she loves playing the Strausses’ scene with michael iannucci.

Nigro cites the character of the steward, Etches, saying “It’s those moments with Michael DiLiberto that get me every time both vocally and in terms of scene work.  He is so grounded in the emotion and so honest; it is so beautiful.”

The panelists are eager to share their research and discoveries in preparation to play historical characters in an event about which so much is already on record. Balgord says, “Once I got started reading about the Strausses and the Titanic, I couldn’t get enough, and I felt it was important to delve into the material as deeply as I could.”

Miller notes that her character of third-class passenger, Kate McGowan, is a hybrid of an Irishwoman by that name and her niece. To Miller’s amazement, when she tracked down records on these women, she discovered that the McGowans had lived in Chicago and that the niece is buried in the “town next to where I grew up.  Researching these real people who went through the unthinkable made this all the more personal for me.”

Nigro says that he sought out everything he could about stoker Frederick Barrett, but “I learned that the more lower-class the character was, there isn’t a whole lot of information on them – not as there is for the Astors and Strausses and Guggenheims. But I was able to find about information about Barrett, his girl back home, and his viewpoint on the sinking as the ship was going down.  I put all those bits and pieces together to form the person I strongly believe he might have been.”

Nigro also notes that “one of the things that stood out to me in my research was the crew’s shutting the watertight doors with the knowledge that there were people down there who were going to drown immediately, but as long as they kept the people who paid more alive, that was what mattered to them.  That affected me because I come from a working-class family, so I feel I have a bit of insight into what Barrett’s character would have been like.”

Balgord segues this thought, saying that in the world of the Titanic and the Gilded Age, “there were distinct groups of people – first, second, third class.  The inequity is deeply upsetting, but that’s how the world was, and, I am sorry to say, still is to a certain degree. The Strausses – Isador was a self-made man - were very wealthy and lived in their own [rarified] world.  In rehearsal we talked about how the first-class passengers do not acknowledge those serving them because they were basically invisible to us. And there is even a hierarchy among the servants; the most accomplished ones tended to the first class and were proud of that.”

Both Miller and Nigro, whose characters are working class, say they can identify with the hopes and dreams of these people. Miller says, “Kate McGowan was going to the New World to find a job and hope and to live the life she was meant to live.”

Nigro feels Barret “wants a family, a good stable job, and maybe someone to listen to him once in a while.”  He shares an image that he uses in his portrayal: “At the reprise of ‘Fare Thee Well,’ I always imagine myself appearing on stage with my family and taking my hat and putting it on my kid’s head and showing him how to stoke.  It’s really tragic that doesn’t happen, but I think Barrett’s dream would be to be with his family, teaching his son the importance of doing service for others and being proud of the work he does.”

The touching idealism of that notion prompts a discussion about the many moments of heroism in TITANIC from those center stage to those more quiet and subtle. Balgord cites the instant “when Barret recognizes that Kate and Jim Farrell are a couple and gives up his chance to board a lifeboat. He wants them to be together.  No one really knows what he has done except he, himself.”

Miller finds Etches’ devotion to his duty deeply moving. “He declines a final glass of champagne with the Strausses, saying he still has his regulars to attend to. Even in this worst-case scenario, he is going to show up to support the people he has [loyally] served for so long.”

And Nigro notes that “There is a the moment during the sinking when “all of us are climbing out of the pit trying to get a spot [on higher ground], and at a point we all freeze and then after the freeze we are all climbing around and making eye contact and sending little messages to help each other.  I like those moments that are somewhat unplanned but make for beautiful transitions between the planned ones.”

Asked if the fact that this production of TITANIC was three years delayed by the pandemic has lent the experience any different significance, each of the panelists muses about how those pandemic years affected them personally and what the return to the stage in something as epic and powerful as TITANIC means to them. Balgord shares that just before the pandemic she and her husband had left New York for Wisconsin to begin a semi-retirement. “I was sixty-three – exactly the age Ida Strauss was at the time of the Titanic’s sinking – and for once in our lives, it seemed like we had good timing.  We were stepping away from what we had both done for [more than] thirty years, and this move helped us to adjust. So when I got the call to come do this show now, I had to get back in shape vocally because I hadn’t sung a lot in those three years, but I was thrilled.”

Miller also feels that despite the uncertainty, there was “a bit of a silver lining in having time to be with my husband who is also an actor.” And she says she honestly wondered if, coming out of the pandemic, people would want to hear the Titanic story. But she adds, “Being in the same room with this company was a lovely way to emerge from the pandemic because, in a way, the story pays homage to the last few years as far as tragedy and community go.”

Nigro also concedes that the pandemic years allowed him to reconnect with family and friends and re-evaluate things.  But he acknowledges that the time was also painful. “It felt as if I were breaking up with someone. I almost sent my manager and my agent an email saying I can’t do this any more - or at least for now - because it is sucking everything out of me.  Everything I worked up to for so many years may never happen again. When I auditioned for TITANIC three years ago, I was a different person. Finally getting to do this show made me understand and appreciate how special it is to do what I do.”

Clark says that “The long time waiting for this production to appear was very difficult. But the end result is we get to present something way grander technically than anything MSMT has ever done before.  I am so proud we can give this to the community.”  In addition to the spectacular technical component of the show, Clark feels very gratified that this TITANIC is such a stirring, unforgettably moving and beautiful piece of storytelling. “If a musical ends in tragedy, it has to be amazing to win over its audience. For a show to play the way our TITANIC is playing tells you how good it is.”

 

Photo courtesy of MSMT, Dane Whitlock, photographer

TITANIC runs until June 24, 2023 at MSMT’s Pickard Theater, Bowdoin College Campus, 1 Bath Rd., Brunswick, ME 207-725-8769   www.msmt.org

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