{"id":194859,"date":"2026-04-13T02:23:09","date_gmt":"2026-04-13T02:23:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/194859\/"},"modified":"2026-04-13T02:23:09","modified_gmt":"2026-04-13T02:23:09","slug":"titanique-what-did-i-miss","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/194859\/","title":{"rendered":"Titanique: What Did I Miss?"},"content":{"rendered":"

April 12, 2026 10:00 pm <\/p>\n

By Michael Sommers<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2605\u2605\u2605\u2606\u2606 Marla Mindelle, Jim Parsons and a merry crew sail off on a little spoof about a big disaster<\/p>\n

\"\"The cast of Titanique. Photo: Evan Zimmerman for MurphyMade<\/p>\n

Friends, has this ever happened to you? There you sit at a Broadway musical where it seems nearly everybody in the theater is screaming with laughter and cheering the performers, and you don\u2019t get what the hubbub\u2019s all about. That was me the other evening at\u00a0Titanique.<\/p>\n

A musical lampoon of both the 1997 disaster flick and pop diva C\u00e9line Dion whose jukebox of trademark songs rings up for much of its score, Titanique\u00a0has nabbed awards and considerable popularity over the last few seasons. After a two-year run Off Broadway plus sit-down stints among seven major cities, this musical spoof crafted by Marla Mindelle, Constantine Rousouli and Tye Blue arrived on Broadway at the St. James Theatre on Sunday for a springtime visit.<\/p>\n

Before going further, let\u2019s note that I am familiar with the James Cameron film. Amid the enormous gaps in my awareness of relatively recent popular culture, however, is a nearly total blank on C\u00e9line Dion and most of the show\u2019s songs. It\u2019s widely reported that the bright-eyed, big-voiced Marla Mindelle, who was so fabulous in The Big Gay Jamboree, provides a delightful impression of the Canadian musical legend. The audience certainly responded enthusiastically to Mindelle\u2019s gaily chattering impersonation of the sparkly-gowned chanteuse whenever she cheerfully barged in and out of the story.<\/p>\n

[Read David Finkle\u2019s \u2605\u2605\u2606\u2606\u2606 review here.<\/a>]<\/p>\n

The incongruity of Dion suddenly materializing under a stateroom couch or beneath that shipwrecked door proves to be the show\u2019s running, or rather, floating gag. As an easygoing satire of the film\u2019s silly Rose-Jack-Cal romantic plot,\u00a0Titanique\u00a0succeeds at being even sillier, but at least it offers a happy ending. This slapdash, revue-style content and a dozen or so pop numbers are stretched across 100 intermission-free minutes in an event that Tye Blue, the director, stages to look spontaneous. The scenic designers have erected upon the stage a skeletal metal structure \u2014 shaped rather like the liner\u2019s prow from a sea-level (or movie poster) perspective \u2014 that also suggests a Vegas lounge or cruise ship bandstand where 18 musicians vigorously pour out such likely familiar pop numbers as \u201cAll By Myself,\u201d \u201cTell Him\u201d and of course the essential \u201cMy Heart Will Go On.\u201d<\/p>\n

Along with Mindelle, most among the gung-ho company are splendid vocalists like coauthor Rousouli, who robustly and humorously depicts Jack, and a snappy Deborah Cox, who drifts around as Molly Brown, and they all sing their faces off. Not so much of a singer but a droll player, Jim Parsons coolly sports bee-stung lips, an aviary headpiece and a wonderfully snooty attitude in his drag incarnation as Rose\u2019s formidable mama. Tackling other principal roles, Frankie Grande, John Riddle, Melissa Barrera and Layton Williams do as best they can with their thin, obvious material, but they are dressed effectively for their characters by designer Alejo Vietti, who fashions quite the iceberg.<\/p>\n

Whether\u00a0Titanique proves to be too casual as an entertainment to attract a goodly Broadway crowd to the 1,339-seat St. James Theatre over the next 13 weeks is a prediction thankfully beyond my expertise. Speaking of which, let me assure readers who may fear I don\u2019t know beans about Schmigadoon\u00a0and\u00a0The Rocky Horror Show (which I will review next week) that I am versed in Golden Age musicals and I can dance \u201cThe Time Warp\u201d better than most.<\/p>\n

Titanique opened April 12, 2026, at the St. James Theatre and runs through July 12. Tickets and information: titaniquebroadway.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"April 12, 2026 10:00 pm By Michael Sommers \u2605\u2605\u2605\u2606\u2606 Marla Mindelle, Jim Parsons and a merry crew sail…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":194860,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[9,24,55,54,56],"class_list":{"0":"post-194859","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york-city","8":"tag-new-york","9":"tag-new-york-city","10":"tag-new-york-city-headlines","11":"tag-new-york-city-news","12":"tag-ny"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194859","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=194859"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194859\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/194860"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=194859"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=194859"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=194859"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}