Gold Coast Little Theatre Review – Titanic the Musical.

An insight into the lives of the real passengers and crew who lived and died on the Titanic’s ill-fated maiden voyage.

Review by Douglas Kennedy

Titanic the Musical.

 Music and lyrics by Maury Yeston and the story and book by Peter Stone.

The five-time award winning musical premiered on Broadway in 1997 and is unrelated to the film, which opened the same year. Titanic is presented with the permission of ORiGiN Theatrical on behalf of Tams-Witmark LLC.

This Gold Coast Little Theatre production is directed by Stuart Morgan with music direction by Matt Pearson and choreography by Sophie Willmot.

Titanic features an ensemble cast of more than 20. The show is part of the GCLT’s 75^th anniversary season

Season runs until September 13, 2025.

For further information and bookings: https // www.gclt.com.au Phone bookings 0424 239 187. Seating for people with a disability is available on request (until booked out).

It would be hard to imagine any significant spoilers in this review as the saga of the doomed ship once dubbed ‘the largest floating object in the world’ is the most chronicled disaster of the 20^th century.

The ‘unsinkable ship,’ set sail from Southampton on April 10^th, 1912, and on April 15^th struck an iceberg, which began its descent to a watery grave taking with it 1500 men, women and children.

The doomed souls came from all walks and classes of life as death is probably our last level playing field with no respect for position or status.

There’s plenty to be said and read about the Titanic – some of its 706 survivors even gave their own testaments – but how does it stack up as a musical.

Well, the folk who dish out America’s premiere Tony theatre awards thought it was a cut above the average, they gave it five gongs including best musical and it had a New York run of 804 performances as well as international success.

At the time, composer Maury Yeston, talked about the subject’s appeal from the overview of the human desire for great artistic and technological goals to the less complicated hopes and aspirations of the three passenger classes.

For the third class it was the chance of a better life in America, for the second a chance to live a leisured lifestyle in the shadow of the elite and the first to maintain their privileged lifestyle.

So how did the GCLT’s interpretation of this major success shape up?

Fairly well overall, largely thanks to the technical team headed by big show specialist and former GCLT president Stuart Morgan (front of house guru Bob Watson takes on the president’s role this year).

Director Morgan has a gift for staging the big stuff with shows such as The King and I, Green Day’s American Idiot and Guys and Dolls to his credit.

He knows how to work with a large ensemble, but is still adept at creating small intimate scenes, which stops a show from getting lost in the big picture.

The problem is that when you’re working with a large ensemble local cast it is different – if not impossible – to have the same level of excellent talent throughout the cast.

The trick is to create the overall veneer and that’s done by knocking the whole team into shape and putting the emphasis of talent on the shoulders of two or three outstanding individuals.

For my money three of the best were Brock Drinkwater (radio operator Harold Bride and others), Emma Erdis (aspiring upward mobile second class passenger Alice and others) and the Titanic’s ultimate boss played by Captain Edward Smith (Simon Stone).

Those credits belong in the performance compartment, and while I am sure I have missed some great aspiring talent that others would see, some of the actors deserve acknowledgement as well.

The Titanic designer Thomas Andrews (Ziggy Dutfield), the Titanic’s bad boy White Star boss   Bruce Ismay (Tane Coates) and again Captain Smith (Simon Stone) are among the principal characters.

There’s also a swag of behind-the-scenes talent that needs signaling out for helping to bring the show to the stage. They number nearly 40.

Indeed, bringing Titanic the Musical, to the stage has been a mammoth task, but at the end of the day most pieces of the puzzle fell into place.

What touches the heart is seeing the characters on stage and knowing that these were real people with real goals and aspirations. Class counts for little when you are on the Titanic and there’s a shortfall of lifeboats.

The Titanic was more than an Oscar winning film or a Tony award winning musical, it was a real-life human story of a group of individuals who lived and died on a ship that was believed to be unsinkable.

The show, which runs to September 13, is proving to be a huge box office hit with tickets racing out of the door as if the place is on fire.

It is worth catching – if you can!

ENDS