H.M.S. Pinafore This Ain't

Titanic the Musical is coming to Birmingham. And before you burst into Celine Dion and ruin anyone within ear-shot's week, this is not the musical of the movie. It originated on Broadway where Brummie director Thom Southerland discovered it, sailed it (incident-free) to our shores and added his spin. Via Southwark Playhouse, Charing Cross Theatre, Southampton and more, it will dock at the Hippodrome on June 4. And we learned in a ten-minute chinwag with Thom exactly why we should be buying tickets. And we're all invited to a post-show debrief in Mr Egg, too.

How often do you have to tell people this has nothing to do with the movie?
[Chuckling] Ohhh, frequently. A lot of people who come to watch, their first insight into what the Titanic was, was from the film. Mine was, in fact. Predominantly they’re coming to learn more, or to experience a musical telling of the same tale, but yes people do occasionally walk out asking where Jack and Rose were.

You’d be a lot richer if it was the musical of the movie, though, right?
Hahahaha! Yes, maybe so. The music is so beautifully crafted by Maury Yeston, that within the first ten minutes you’re not wishing it was anything else. The movie does several things with the story — shocking, saccharine, romantic treatments of the tragedy and they don’t interest me at all. This is a more heartfelt and real story about what the Titanic is and was.

Are you a Titanic nerd? 
We're called Titanoraks, actually, but yes I am. More than just the ship though, it's a period of history that fascinates me. The one thing I can never really comprehend is that Titanic was nearly a quarter of a mile long and weighed 46,000 tonnes and the only thing that steered it was a wheel at the front! And their only navigation was a guy in a crow’s nest!

When you put it like that, I guess they were asking for trouble.
Well, engineering was evolving so quickly, they could build luxurious liners, but the technology couldn't catch up. Radar was still a decade away. The sheer audacity of building something so heavy and long, steered by two guys, one behind a wheel and another saying ‘yep, you’re all good, just keep going straight,' blows my mind.

How do you take such a tragic event and give it a musical spin? It’s sort of hard to grasp how the two can possibly combine?
I completely see that. People often feel that musical theatre has to only deal with happy subjects, but it’s not all Mamma Mia and 42nd Street, those wonderful care-free tales. Sometimes it's Les Mis, sometimes it's Oliver. The Titanic was the epitome of progress, everyone on board knew it was the glamorous event of the time — everybody that sailed on her knew they were experiencing greatness. Every musical has to have optimism and hope and yearning, and there’s so much of that here. For more than half of the show the people don’t know their fate, so there’s room for hope. It was the happiest time of their lives. It meant so much to everyone on board and you can tap into that for entertainment.

Do you actually bring the moment the ship sinks to stage?
You do see the last moments of the ship but the one thing I didn’t want to do with this show is simply replicate what happened. I think that’s bad taste. When the show was first announced in New York, when it was revealed that a team were going to produce a musical about the tragedy the New York Times ran the headline ‘Watch Them Sing, Watch Them Dance, Watch them Drown’.

Wow.
Yeah, exactly. That was not what I wanted to do at all. I don’t want to spoil the show but something happens where everyone in the audience understands that this is the final moment, that the ship is tilting high in the air, the final moment that she went under. April 15, 1912.

Sounds haunting. 
It is! The cast gets quite overwhelmed with emotion because they are playing characters that were real people — some of whom lived through the experience. So the show obviously takes a very different turn at the critical point, and the actors speak lines that were spoken by survivors directly to the audience. They tell you, firsthand, what these people saw. And how they went on to live their lives after. It ishaunting, absolutely. We’ve had relatives of some of those people who are being portrayed on stage come up to us after the show and say, “that was my great-grandfather” and it brings it home. But having said all that, it’s a wildly entertaining show, too. You'll only know how we balance these emotions by seeing it, I guess.

And you used to visit the Hippodrome as a kid, right?  
Yes! In the 80s and early 90s the Hippodrome is where I caught the theatre bug! Touring shows and the panto, front row with my grandmother. Mr Egg afterwards or maybe a bite to eat at Rackhams, if I was lucky.  

You went to Mr Egg? The theatre of dreams!
I did, yes. Is it still there?

Not as you know it, Thom. Not as you know it.
Hmm, well maybe I'll give it a go after one of the shows.

Can we come?
You can come.

Titanic the Musical is at the Hippodrome from June 4 to 9. Tickets