Titanique is a psychological lifeboat for a nation filled with nice people who need a break from the dark and frigid waters of corruption, fascism, and hatred. That alone is worth the ticket and permission to board this campy, hilarious, and surreal adventure at sea. Thankfully, my wife and I were lucky lottery-ticket stowaways to this maritime musical where the impending doom felt like a cool drink of water compared to swimming in the sea of bad news on our iPhones. Wow, that was a lot of water metaphors. Sorry for drowning you in them.
Escapism is the hallmark of art. Titanique offers a portal to a creative tour-de-force that reminds me of the first time I read One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez, a book that changed my life. Nothing compares to the feeling that ANYTHING can happen because the creative boundaries have been eliminated and the result is a blinding, open-minded foray into what could happen. Celine Dion was born on March 30th, 1968. The Titanic sank on April 14th, 1912. None of that matters because in this show Celine is a passenger on the Titanic (with her own star-adorned cabin door) and that infamous mercenary of an iceberg can sing and dance like a sasquatch-sized, fully deployed ostrich with the vocal range of the Grateful Dead’s Wall of Sound.
The Origin: From Adult Swim to a Tidal Wave
For you uninitiated tadpoles, Titanique didn’t just appear on a marquee overnight with a multi-million dollar marketing budget and big blue sequined heart. It is the under-dogfish story of the decade; the flamboyant Carnival cruise ship that survived the rough seas of WTF is this and made it safely to the Great White (Shark) Way. The show was the brainchild of uber-talented writers Tye Blue, Marla Mindelle, and Constantine Rousouli. It began as a scrappy, fever-dream parody born in Los Angeles before voyaging its way to its spiritual port Off-Broadway at the (Insane) Asylum Theatre in 2022.
This trio of seaworthy writers understood a fundamental truth about modern entertainment: we are fucking exhausted. We don’t always need a three-hour tour of deconstruction exploring the human condition; sometimes, we need a high-octane, glitter-covered reimagining of a 1997 blockbuster movie told through the discography of a Canadian vocal powerhouse. What started in a basement-sized theater eventually gained such a cult following that it moved to the Daryl Roth Theatre and eventually solidified its status as a permanent fixture not far from the Intrepid in the New York theater scene. It is proof that if you lean hard enough into the absurdity, the world will eventually splash back like a dolphin at Sea World (so cruel, btw).
The Cast: Sing Like the French Girls, Jack
The brilliance of Titanique lies in its refusal to simply tread water in its own hilarity. The actors play the absurdity with the gravity of high tide in a Shakespearean orca tragedy, which only makes the comedy hit harder. While the show has seen various iterations of its cast, the caliber of talent is consistently astronomical for those with a sextant sense of humor.
One notable water-spout performance of this show was the inclusion of Jim Parsons—yes, the Emmy-winning star of The Big Bang Theory. Parsons paddled into the role of Rose’s high-society, dramatically overbearing mother, Ruth DeWitt Bukater, for a limited, star-saturated performance. Seeing a titan of television personify the one-percent-obsessed—but sadly trying to survive life—matriarch is the exact kind of high-low art synthesis that Broadway for Bros crew members live for. It takes the “anything can happen” spirit of the show to a whole new level when a sitcom legend is the one tightening Rose’s corset while Celine Dion narrates the whole oceanic ordeal from center stage.
Marla Mindelle, who is more Celine Dion than Celine Dion, set a standard so high it’s practically a lone lighthouse on the shores of comedy singing into the high seas of our seats way up in the top tier of the St. James Theatre. Her ability to mimic Dion’s iconic chest-beating, “ma-me-mi-mo-mu” vocal warmups, and specific French-Canadian syntax is a masterclass in caricature. The supporting cast—playing Jack, Rose, Cal, and the “Unsinkable” Molly Brown—transform these well-worn archetypes into comedic coal-fired engine rooms. They don’t just sing the hits; they weaponize them like the 5-inch guns of a destroyer. When the first chords of “All By Myself” or “My Heart Will Go On” ring out, the theater doesn’t just feel like a room; it feels like a water park.
The Story: History Be Damned (the Torpedos)
The narrative structure—and I use that term loosely—is framed by Celine Dion hijacking a Titanic museum tour. She insists she was there when it all went down. She insists she drank it all in with her own eyes. And we believe her, because that is absolutely true. In our current world of lies, believing Celine Dion was a luminary vocal force for storytelling on the fated Titanic is utterly believable and welcome news to history books. From there, the show re-tells the James Cameron epic but through a lens of pure, unadulterated camp and sea-foam circumstances.
The writers were brilliant in how they integrated Celine’s catalog. The songs aren’t merely covers. They are plot points that soar across the audience, many of whom rose from their seats and cheered like they just saw the Carpathia. “River Deep, Mountain High” becomes a declaration of passion, and “To Love You More” is a desperate plea for survival in the sea of shit that is America. The humor is fast, irreverent, and deeply self-aware. It mocks the film’s logic (yes, there was plenty of room on the floating cabin door for poor Jack) while simultaneously paying homage to the sheer cultural weight of the story in our society’s weird obsession with rich people dying too soon. (But they did get to ridicule and frame poor people before drowning, so, mission accomplished.)
Originality in a Sea of Beaches (IYKYK)
In a world that feels increasingly like the Great Pacific Garbage Patch (GPGP, seriously it has an official acronym, that’s where we are a species), Titanique is a necessary floatation ring thrown to us by lifeguards dressed in sequins, sarcasm, and boas. Leave the drama and the dramamine at home, because these characters remind us that art doesn’t always have to be “important” to be essential. It just has to be historically accurate… by today’s standards. The cast (net), musicians, and writers bypass every creative boundary the others can’t swim past, ignoring the constraints of history and physics. Blue, Mindelle, and Rousouli created something that feels entirely new, like Jaws 2, if it was the sequel to The Notebook.
Pro Tip: As the show winds down like an outgoing tide the cast offers one last swirling hurricane of a song that the audience is welcome to record and post (and tag) on social media. Sadly, we always turn our phones all the way off, so we couldn’t seize the opportunity, like Jack watching the floating door carry his soul mate into the cold abyss of a posh and pampered aristocratic, shrimp-cocktail life for the next 83 years.
Rating: 5/5 Star-Adorned Cabin Doors.
See you under the marquee. – Jim Thompson
P.S. Here is the best I could at curtain call. But go see it for yourself! And props to the bros in the Hawaiian shirts. Totally recommend nautical-themed clothes for this one.