If those who went down with the R.M.S. Titanic in 1912 only knew how their seafaring ordeal still grips the public imagination! It might provide some comfort (albeit cold comfort) to the 1,500 victims of one of the century's most colossal maritime boondoggles, and needless tragedies.
The Tony Award-winning 1997 musical "Titanic," now at the 5th Avenue Theatre on national tour, is the Broadway equivalent of a docu-opera and treats a legendary soggy saga with intelligence and dignity.
Fueled by a lush symphonic score, a shipload of fact-based characters, and a sense of moral outrage, "Titanic" earns respect. But lacking the dramatic vigor and sonic variety to go full steam ahead, it often settles into a stately lulling motion that becalms rather than excites.
Composer-lyricist Maury Yeston and author Peter Stone did their homework and let you know it. "Titanic" gives stats at every opportunity, eg. in the heraldic opening sung by passengers and crew as they board the ship in England, we learn the luxury liner is "46,000 tons of steel/11 stories high" with "7,000 heads of fresh lettuce" in the larder.
With more scrupulous attention to historical fact than the recent "Titanic" movie, the musical also details the tensions between rich, poor and middle-class passengers, and between the ship's stoic captain, E.J. Smith (John Cunningham) and its owner, J. Bruce Ismay (David Garrison), whose demands for a speedy voyage and cavalier attitude toward safety are largely blamed for the looming debacle.
The show keeps numerous human minidramas afloat. Steerage passengers dream of life in America. A coal stoker (Marcus Chait) pines for a gal left behind. A humble housewife (Liz McConahay) longs to crash first class. Department-store mogul Isador Straus (S. Marc Jordan) and his wife Ida (Taina Elg) share uncommon devotion.
While the plot streams are well-charted, the dull staging often drains them of vitality. Richard Jones, a veteran opera director, tends to line up, march and promenade the actors through scenes. Stewart Laing's sets, simplified for touring, intensify this lack of dynamism, confining most of the action to one level with flat, blueprint-style backdrops indicating the various ship locales.
When passengers suddenly appear to gaze down from a stairwell above us, when men's faces are eerily framed by portholes, when the ship tilts perilously toward the briny deep, the perspective shifts intriguingly. Paul Gallo's excellent lighting helps too, with a starry violet night sky that's particularly chilling.
But the main event in "Titanic" is Yeston's score, superbly orchestrated by Jonathan Tunick (who, like Yeston, Stone, and Laing, earned a Tony for his labors). More musically intricate and ambitious than most recent Broadway shows, "Titanic" conjures a sense of epic grandeur through semi-operatic duets and trios, canonic forms and choral sonorities, most markedly in the eight-song, 20-minute opening suite that introduces the show's themes and characters. With nods to Ravel and others, Yeston employs swirling symphonic motifs to suggest sea-motion and a powerful brass blast to conjure that rendezvous with an iceberg.
Yet despite such diversions as a romantic ballad ("Still") and a light dance number ("Doing the Latest Rag"), there's a whole-cloth, textural sameness here that minimizes surprise and eventually lulls the score into bland prettiness.
That's no fault of the generally fine-voiced cast, who deserve crisper, more refined amplification for their pains. Chait sings the stoker's role with great distinction, Melissa Bell repeats her hearty Broadway turn as Kate McGowan, McConahay(cq) endears as the climber Alice. And when all 30-plus cast members raise their voices, they make this a memorable voyage