Titanic - Review

Charing Cross Theatre, London


****

Music and lyrics by Maury Yeston
Book by Peter Stone
Directed by Thom Southerland

The company of Titanic

Unlike its ill-fated namesake, Thom Southerland’s Titanic has now made a triumphant trans-Atlantic return crossing, tying up at London’s Charing Cross Theatre for a 10 week season. Acclaimed at the Southwark Playhouse three years ago and later in Toronto, this riverside reprise marks Southerland’s debut as Artistic Director at Charing Cross, with his long time muse Danielle Tarento also on board as co-producer.

Adapted for the stage by Peter Stone and Maury Yeston, the musical tells of the 1912 tragedy when the RMS Titanic hit an iceberg on its maiden voyage, sinking mid-Atlantic with the loss of more than 2,000 lives. Yeston was drawn to the project by the positive aspects of what the ship represented: Humankind’s striving after great artistic works – with his show following the very different arcs of the ship’s owners, builders, passengers and crew.

The casting for this production is, for the most part, magnificent. A fair few members of the original production have returned to reprise their roles and with Yeston’s score so beautifully conducted by Jo Cichonska, it’s not surprising. The strength of the onstage pairings such as Dudley Rogers and Judith Street as the wealthy Strauss couple or Victoria Serra and Shane McDaid’s loveable Irish runaways, Kate McGowan and Jim Farrell, make a couple of tiny casting flaws elsewhere very easy to overlook.

Serra (magnificent in the original Titanic as well as last year in Southerland’s Grand Hotel) shines as McGowan. Energetic and youthful, her larger than life personality makes her character unforgettable. Even amidst the ensemble where she plays a modest role as one of the first class passengers, Serra stands out.

There is marvellous work too from James Gant as Etches, a steward in first class. Gant plays his character with warmth, a fatherly figure to the ship’s younger crew members. Making strong choices in his acting, there isn’t a point where the audience doubts him. As the ship is sinking he attempts to gather passengers calmly, although with a fear that is physically visible, not only in his face but in his whole body. One can see that behind his calm and cool demeanour the man is truly terrified. It is a performance that is almost troubling to watch.

The accomplished Claire Machin is unsurprisingly hilarious in her role of socialite “wannabe” Alice Bean. Her timing and characterful wit on stage provides moments of light relief in the otherwise harrowing tale, partnered with Peter Prentice, who plays her husband Edgar Bean, the two have a wonderful back and forth yet amidst the bickering, their moments of tender romance are joyously believable. 

And one to watch is Luke George playing a fresh-faced and innocent 14 year old bellboy. Beautiful acting, with every choice he makes looking like that of a young child and with a vulnerability in his performance that makes you believe his age.

David Woodhead’s design is minimalistic but effective, using the basic framing of bars to create the appearance of the ocean liner's deck, with the theatre itself repainted to match the colour of the set. Looking up from the stalls, the circle resembles the Titanic’s upper deck. Throughout, Howard Hudson’s wonderful lighting only seals the nautical illusion, as Cressida Carre's choreography remains as sensitively powerful as it was three years ago.

What has been produced at Charing Cross is a gripping and beautiful production that makes for a deeply moving night at the theatre. Bravo to Tarento and Southerland for sailing Titanic back to London.

Runs until 6th August

Reviewed by Charlotte Darcy

Photo credit: Scott Rylander

The Boat Factory

Kings Head Theatre, London

*****

Written by Dan Gordon

Directed by Philip Crawford

Michael Ondron (l) and Dan Gordon

The Boat Factory is that fine and rare piece of modern theatre. It’s a simply staged two-hander about the Harland and Wolff shipyard in Belfast. But where Roald Dahl has used a fictional chocolate factory to tell morality tales, Dan Gordon takes strands of historical fact and weaves them into the most beautiful yarn. The Boat Factory didn’t just dominate East Belfast, it provided the core to a community’s culture and a way of life.

Writer Gordon also plays Davy Gordon, a man introduced to us in the modern era, awaiting the results of a chest x-ray that are clearly signalled to be ominous. As Gordon confronts his mortality, he takes us on a journey of discovery, retracing his life through a series of exchanges with fellow shipyard worker Geordie Kilpatrick played by Michael Condron. Both men frequently slip in and out of different characters as foils to Gordon’s narrative acting out moments of the company’s history upon a stage of the simplest scaffolding with a blown-up image of a map of the massive shipyard for a backdrop

If the stage is simple, Gordon’s words are crafted with almost technicolor detail. We learn of the dominance of the factory over the city. We hear of the men’s pride in the company’s achievement in 1912 of building the yard’s biggest ship to that date, #401 Titanic. No moist-eyed look at Titanic’s tragedy here though, rather the glow of engineers simply basking in the deserved glory of their achievement and their subsequent devastation at the fact that this magnificent ship had sunk because a reckless owner demanded it be raced through an ice-field at night.

And its this attention to the minutest of detail that drives the success of Gordon’s play. Apprenticeships in the H&W shipyard were not only dreamed of by the city’s young men, they were actually paid for by the young trainees and even then the apprentices still had to supply their own tools! We hear of the scant disregard for an emergent health & safety culture, the factory frequently consuming its workers’ limbs, livelihoods and ultimately their lives, yet with brilliantly black humour we learn too of the skilled carpenters and joiners who cheekily used both the company's time and its materials to privately build and sell kitchens to the folk of East Belfast. No stranger too to the pain of sectarianism, Gordon acknowledges the complexities of the decades of religious hatred that have scarred his beautiful province with a well-crafted and respectful sensitivity.

Condron and Gordon’s familiarity with their work (recently back from a month’s residency in New York off-Broadway) has seen the play evolve into the smoothest of double acts. Their understanding of the text’s timing and nuances has become innate and whilst the sharply observed humour of the piece may make you cry with laughter, their tales of shipyard tragedy all related with honesty in place of soppy sentimentality, will make you sob.

For those (most) of us who know all about the tragedy of the Titanic, yet virtually nothing of the city that gave itself and its people, literally, to the construction of that ship and thousands of others too, The Boat Factory is a glorious celebration of Belfast and of its culture. It is one of the most beautiful pieces of theatre in town right now and it is a play that must be seen.



Runs until 17th August, and then from August 21st - 24th in Caithness, Scotland 

Titanic

Southwark Playhouse, London

****

Music and lyrics by Maury Yeston

Book by Peter Stone

Directed by Thom Southerland

Philip Rham

Earlier this year, the Southwark Playhouse slipped its moorings at London Bridge and headed south to Elephant and Castle. Now, in her first London production of 2013, Danielle Tarento cracks a bottle of champagne across the theatre’s bows with her production of Maury Yeston’s Tony winning show Titanic taking up an August residency at the venue.

This producer's form remains impeccable. Selecting trusted talent Thom Southerland to envision the work and with Cressida Carre’s choreography, David Woodhead’s inspired design all railings, upper decks and rope and the lighting wizardry of Howard Hudson, the essence of The White Star Line’s doomed flagship is beautifully evoked.

Yeston premiered his work on Broadway in 1997, just a few months before James Cameron’s movie was to ensure that the whole world knew what happened on that fateful night in April 1912. Whilst Yeston's show opened before the movie, watching his musical in 2013 we find that it teaches us nothing new. We already know that many of the ship's officers were noble, that the owner was ruthless, that some men were heroic and that passengers in 3rd class and steerage were treated appallingly. Yeston's melodies (mostly unfortunately forgettable) don't age well and not for the first time his lyrics are found to be lacking in substance. An epic story demands a deep and epic treatment. Yeston's analysis runs aground in very shallow waters.

So hurrah for Tarento and her team. Philip Rham quite literally is Captain Smith. His bearded poise and weary acceptance of Ismay, the owner’s, persistent demands for reckless speed through a treacherous ice field, is worth the price of admission alone. Rham’s patrician Captain exemplifies both the steel and responsibility of his command yet also the elegant and dignified courtesy of the time. Simon Green’s despicable Ismay is another fine performance, even if he has been written as little more than a pantomime villain. Where Smith is a finely fleshed out man of handsome character, Green's Ismay can at times be imagined stroking an evil moustache as his lust for speed and profit over safety condemns the journey, such is the cliche of his character. Greg Castoglioni is Andrews the ships architect, one of several portentous players who caution Smith against reckless speed. His is a measured portrayal of a man placed in desperate circumstances.

The passenger list has some first class gems. Celia Graham maintains her reputation for excellence as Alice Beane a desperate social climber, whilst below decks Victoria Serra as a shamed pregnant Irish lass off to make a new life in the New World puts in a stylish turn along with Shane McDaid as the charming young lad who falls for her. Veterans Judith Street and Dudley Rogers provide a rare moment of authentic poignancy as elderly millionaires who reject the lifeboats, electing for an icy death in each others arms and James Hume as their champagne pouring steward also puts in a convincing and subtly understated performance of profound tragedy.

The design is brilliant in its suggestion of the ship's famous lines. Tarento avoids expensive gimmickry, relying instead on a pure simplicity of image and the audience's fertile imagination, pre-fuelled thanks to our familiarity with the Cameron oscar-winner. When her Titantic finally and famously rears up, with horizontal decking horrifically becoming the sheerest of deathly cliff faces, the effect is a perfect combination of desperately beautiful stagecraft and Southerland's classy direction.

Like a classic albeit tragically true fairy tale, we know Titanic's story before we take our seats. Tarento's take on history is nothing less than respectful and humbling and she tells it with production values that continue to re-define excellence in London's off-West End.


Runs until 31 August 2013