Sunday, November 07, 1999
'Titanic' disaster inspires Broadway musical
BY JACKIE DEMALINE
The Cincinnati Enquirer
She was the largest moving object in the world. She was setting a record as the fastest ship afloat. In modern dollars, a first-class ticket for her maiden voyage was $50,000, and among the famous people who bought them were John Jacob Astor, Benjamin Guggenheim and Isidor and Ida Straus. She had 16 water-tight compartments and was advertised as “unsinkable.”
When R.M.S. Titanic rammed an iceberg on April 14, 1912, it didn't much matter whether you were rich or poor. It mattered more whether you were lucky. Of the 2,228 people on board, 711 survived.
The famous sinking has been the subject of films, searches, television specials, campfire songs. In 1997, Titanic: A New Musical debuted on Broadway. It makes a two-week national tour stop at Aronoff Center for the Arts starting Tuesday.
The end-of-the-century timing was part of what inspired titanic talent Peter Stone to script the musical.
“We've had the Challenger, citywide blackouts, it's Y2K. We're constantly faced with technological problems. The sinking of the Titanic was this century's first monumental failure of technology since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution.
“What made the technology fail was nature — an iceberg. Audiences like hurricanes, asteroids, erupting volcanoes, earthquakes — it shows us where we stand in things.
“We've found more and more ways to prevent potential disaster, but we can't say it can't happen — because then it will happen.”
If the name Peter Stone is unfamiliar, chances are you aren't a musical or a mystery buff. Mr. Stone is the only writer ever to win an Oscar, an Emmy and a Tony.
He has an armful of Tony Awards, for Titanic, 1776, The Will Rogers Follies and Woman of the Year. He also has an Edgar (named for Poe and awarded by the Mystery Writers of America) for his screenplay for Charade. (He also wrote The Taking of Pelham 1-2-3 among many other films.)
He was collaborating with composer-lyricist Maury Yeston on Grand Hotel when they discovered they were both intrigued by the idea of creating a musical about the Titanic.
Mr. Stone loved the idea because it's the rare show about a historic event that “fits the Aristotelian rules of drama.” That means the story has a logical beginning, middle and end, and all feature a natural dramatic thrust.
The real work of Titanic, he says, was in the research because “I was determined not to invent characters. If you're going to invent characters, they'd better be worth inventing. But then the ship would become the background and the sinking a device” — not unlike a certain 1997 blockbuster starring Leonardo DiCaprio.
Mr. Stone found the real people aboard the doomed ship fascinating, and the drama unfolds through three story lines.
A stoker, a radio operator and the ship's look-out were chosen to be principal players “because they knew the details — the ship's speed, the telegraphed iceberg warnings, the weather conditions. They were directly involved with the elements of the disaster.”
On the ship's bridge, the ship's owner, builder and captain “were responsible for the inevitable — the sinking was not an accident. In the first act they congratulate each other for their achievement, in the third they blame each other for the disaster.”
Finally, down in steerage are three Kates, Irish girls who aspire to being a chambermaid, a seamstress, a governess, respectively. They're going to the New World for a new life.
In four days from the boarding at Southampton, all their lives change irrevocably.
Mr. Stone is always busy with projects. Since Titanic, he wrote the revised book for the current revival of Annie Get Your Gun and will tell you that these days things in Gloccamorra are “just fine” as he readies a revised script for a planned Broadway revival of Finian's Rainbow.
He's working on another project with Mr. Yeston, another with Jimmy Webb and one with Marvin Hamlisch.
“The older I get — and that's quickly becoming too old,” he laughs, “I'm not happy if I'm not creating. I just want to keep going.”
Waiting in the wings is Curtains, his attempt to create the first successful musical mystery. His collaborators are John Kander and Fred Ebb (Cabaret, Chicago).
It's not an impossible task, despite the corpses of previous attempts that are strewn across the pages of musical theater history books.
“You can do it if you're careful about how you construct it,” says the man who wrote Charade, Mirage and Arabesque.
“The only thing you can't do is stop to sing if there's real peril in the moment. You don't want to divert the suspense.”
OK, he'll give us a clue: Curtains is about a musical in tryout in Boston and in trouble.
“The murder is committed very early on, so it's more a puzzle. There are complications about reality and the appearance of reality. Just when you think something is real, it isn't.” Danger and peril kick in at the end.
Mr. Stone thought for a moment. It turns out Curtains has been more or less finished “for a while,” but the creative team has all been busy on their own projects. He decides to give his collaborators a call. No point in keeping a good show under wraps.
IF YOU GO
• What: Titanic.
• When: 8 p.m. Tuesday-Friday, 2 and 8 p.m. Saturday, 2 and 7:30 p.m. Sunday through Nov. 21.
• Where: Aronoff Center for the Arts Procter & Gamble Hall.
• Tickets: $35-$55. 241-7469.
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