NO SINKING FEELINGS HERE, GIRLFRIEND
Call it a jukebox musical if you like, but only if the jukebox came alive, went rogue and started tottering around the stage on rubber feet hurling insults and doing its own thing like the one in the Kuttner sci-fi story which got modified by aliens from the future. Curiosity drove me into a snug balcony seat up against the sound-desk (high-fives with the young controller): because its a surprise revue-folk’s hit from off-Broadway, reaching London at last by way of Canada and Sydney.
Marla Mindella, Constantine Rousouli and Tye Blue originally put it together for a one-off laugh, working on the supposition that Celine Dion, whose yowling “My Heart Will Go On” is forever identified with the 1997 film, actually was on the real ship and has somehow lived on a century to take over from a tour guide in the Titanic Museum and give , with a spirited cast, her version of the fictional love story of Rose and Jack.
Irreverent? Actually, a lot less so than Cameron’s mawkish film, which in romcom parasitism on tragedy casually slandered the memory of at least two of the ship’s officers, and fiddled with even the most well-documented history (Yeston and Stone’s musical in 2016 was infinitely better and more respectful).
So this is a self-mocking pop culture fandom riff, camp as ninepence and gay as a bouncy castle made of glitterballs. It sends up not only the overblown romanticism of the Cameron movie but just about every other star in the celebrity firmament (Dua Lipa gets it very hard, Ed Sheeran fleetingly, Adele quite cruelly, and just about everyone else you can think of : Beyonce, Cheryl Cole, a dozen more you will recognize rather faster than I did. Say only that the iceberg, when it turns up, is played by Layton Williams as Tina Turner in sparkling iciclewear. You get the idea.
It is hosted by the remarkable Lauren Drew from Port Talbot as Celine Dion – manically hi-fiveing, a glitteringly split-skirted mic-chewing diva MC who deploys a gloriously ridiculous spoofy French-Canadian accent, a properly lovely singing voice, and a gift for self-parodying physical comedy which should make her a bigger star than she yet is.
Around her the characters of the film enact their soupy plot – Stephen Guarino with a sort of seagull hat as poor Rose’s mother stopping the show more than once (except that hell, it never stops at all, there’s even a joke about its “two second intermission”). Between them they seem to get through most of the biggest and most emotional anthems of the last twenty years, obviously including “All by myself”, while reproducing on a sort of railed bandstand the various adventures of Rose and Jack (Kat Ronney and Rob Houchen, more fine voices). There’s even Molly Brown’s maternal advice to Rose on love, which appears to be explained with an aubergine. Look, I think it was an aubergine, it was the last preview and I was in the balcony enjoying myself.
As did the big, rowdy, young audience, who as “`Celine” explained to us were “certaiinly all gay”, and who erupted at every joke from the corny “Seaman/semen” ones to the UK-friendly references to Claire’s Accessories and TK Maxx, and Drew’s indignation at “Jane McDonald playing an ingenue at the Palladium, while I’m HERE!”
So there you are. Midprice tickets, mine was £ 29.50 and hardly even restricted; it’s neither Ibsen nor a celebrity star-signed crossgender Shakespeare but just screechingly camp fun. A hundred solid minutes of rackety torch-songs, rejecting all seriousness with relentless, merciless gags . Perfect if you want a good gig in a happy crowd: by 9.30 you’ll be clattering down the Criterion’s backstairs singing “Near, far, wherever you are” on the way to the pub . No bad way to start theatrecat’s new year.
criterion-theatre.co.uk to 3 March
rating 4
theatreCat 