Titanic the Musical was written by Maury Yeston in 1997 and is about, you guessed it, the Titanic. It follows the stories of five different groups of people throughout their voyage on the Titanic, until it sinks.
I had the pleasure of seeing this same production of Danielle Tarento’s (Producer) back in 2013 at the Southwark Playhouse in London. A lot of the same clever sets and costumes designed by David Woodhead were used in this production and really gave the audience the sense of being in that time and on that ship.
Apart from a couple of accent issues amongst leading cast members, this production of Titanic was excellent as you would expect an ‘A’ touring production to be. The performers, choreography and direction were excellent, and Howard Hudson’s Lighting Design was excellent.
The issues with this show, however, is not the production team, but the show itself. Any story of The Titanic is cursed, because as an audience member we keep thinking about what is going to happen at the end, rather than what is happening now in the script (The ship sinks…Sorry to ruin it).
While the music is pretty like Les Mis, it doesn’t leave you humming any tunes on the way home. The lyrics are weak and with 5/6 sub plots going on at once, there is little time as an audience member to feel any sympathy or emotion for any of the main characters.
Titanic runs at the Welsh Millennium Centre until the 5th of May