Titanic, the Musical - Monday Music Review

We are approaching my 20 year high school graduation anniversary!  Yes, I’m a 2000 grad and I thought it was so cool to graduate high school in the year 2000.  I loved everything about my senior year, especially musically.  I loved our show choir songs (I’m sure I will share those with you in the future), my choir graduation songs, and our musical, Titanic.  We were the first high school in the country to do Titanic when it went off Broadway.  In fact, we got a message from some of the national tour cast congratulating us on our opening night.  It was so cool.  I played Marion Thayer, first class wife and mother.  My brother, 9 years old at the time, played my son – and man was he adorable.  My sister, a freshman that year, was a maid.  It was the only musical all three of us Kilmer kids got to be in a high school musical at the same time.   It was so precious.

This year there is an entire graduating class that is not getting their special end of the year activities – no show choir performances, cancelled musicals, and no graduation songs.  So I would like to share my high school musical with the graduating class of 2020.

Titanic, A New Musical, by Maury Yeston.  It seems like a morbid topic to make a musical out of but it was such an inspiring musical.  Many themes can be explored in the musical – class, love, connection, pride, blame, and yet ultimately hope.  The musical walks this fine line of exploring, expressing, and entertaining, all while remembering with sobering humility that we were representing real people, real people who suffered and many who actually lost their lives. 

There was not one main character but the show highlighted several lead characters from each class and working level on the ship.  First class showcased Ida and Isador Strauss, the elderly couple of refused to leave each other as the ship sank.  Their song, Still, is one of the more touching songs in the whole show.

The stoker and the telegraph operator, representing the working class aboard the ship demonstrated hope for the future with the Proposal and how one person can be connected with thousands, one event can touch the hearts of the world, The Night Was Alive (this song makes me cry every time).

Captain Smith, Mr. Ismay (the owner), and Mr. Andrews (the builder) demonstrate pride and hubris – an unsinkable ship, beating all speed records, ignoring warnings of icebergs when sighted.  Their pride, ego, hubris, and ultimately anger all culminate in the powerful song The Blame.

The telling of this tragedy, honoring the one thousand, five hundred and seventeen lost souls, still ends on a note of hope, Godspeed Titanic.