Titanic The Musical sails into Claremont to give Candlelight Pavilion Dinner Theatre one of its best productions ever—superb performances, gorgeous songs, first-class design, and a live orchestra to boot.

 Few 20th Century events exert the continuing fascination of the 1912 sinking of the Titanic. The mind still reels at the epic tragedy of a supposedly unsinkable ocean liner on her maiden voyage from Southampton to New York City striking an iceberg in dead of night leaving 1,514 dead and only 710 survivors

What if there had been sufficient lifeboats? What if the ship hadn’t been traveling at full speed in order to reach its destination in record time? What if a few critical modifications had been integrated into its design? What if a nearby ship had gotten Titanic’s SOS? What if? What if? What if?

 These questions, and more, are at the heart of Titanic, winner of five 1997 Tony Awards including Best Musical, Best Book (for Peter Stone’s engaging storylines), and Best Score (for composer-lyricist Maury Yeston’s exquisite songs).

Unlike John Cameron’s Oscar-winning film of the same name, Titanic The Musical offers almost as many plot threads as there are characters, a series of vignettes that introduce us both to crew and to a cross-section of passengers in this extremely class-conscious ocean liner, from the Third-Class voyagers who dreamed of starting life anew in a country whose streets were reputedly paved with gold, to the considerably better-to-do Second-Class travelers, to a First-Class passenger list filled with world-famous millionaires.

 Second-Class passengers include an uptight American whose wife dreams of sneaking up into first class to see how the one-percent live and a young English couple for whom America offers the chance to marry far from the eyes of disapproving parents.

 Featured among Third-Class travelers are a trio of Irish lasses each named Kate, the most outgoing of whom has her eyes set on marrying handsome fellow steerage mate Jim Farrell … once she has made his acquaintance (and before she starts to show).

A Broadway cast of thirty-seven and the daunting task of designing a set to replicate the largest ship afloat made Titanic pretty much out of a regional theater’s budget, that is until original cast member Don Stephenson created a twenty-actor “Ensemble Version” in 2012, reorchestrated for six musicians with no need for a monumental set.

Not only does this reconceived Titanic make the musical more affordable to produce, since most of its cast embody as many as six characters each, Titanic 2.0 gives its performers far more chances to shine and audiences the impression they’re seeing a cast several times its actual size.

 Director Chuck Ketter hasn’t just aced the daunting task of staging one of Candelight’s most complex shows ever and elicited topnotch acting from all concerned, he has designed a splendid new ocean liner set requiring considerably less imagination than the abstract one the Ensemble Version creator had in mind.

 Marc Montminy’s authoritative Captain Smith, Jeffrey Warden’s powerhouse Titanic designer Andrews, and Greg Nicholas’s rapacious White Star Liner director Ismay pass “The Blame” on each other to riveting effect, and Johnny Fletcher shines too as First Officer Murdoch.

 Everyone else plays multiple roles including dynamic Gregg Hammer as ship stoker Frederick Barrett and Gavin Juckette, charming and touching as radioman Bride and later as band leader Wallace Hartley, the duo showing off heavenly vocals both in solos and when duetting “The Night Was Alive.”

Catie Marron, Carolyn Lupin, and Jamie Kaufman make for a feisty, vivacious trio of Kates, Marron sharing a heartstrings-tugging romance with Zach Fogel’s ever so winning Jim.

Sarah Meals provides engaging comic relief as Alice, a Second-Class passenger whose illicit visit to a First-Class-only dance inspires her to wax poetic to husband Edgar (an appropriately tsk-tsking Matt Carvin).

 As Ida and Isidor Strauss, Jamie Snyder and Samantha Wynn Greenstone reveal a couple’s four decades of devotion in a movingly sung “Still,” and soon-to-be newlyweds Charles Clarke and Caroline Neville (the equally terrific Matt Bolden and Amanda Greig) get their own love duet, “I Give You My Hand,” cut pre-Broadway but restored here.

Max Herzfeld (Fleet), Christian “Pinecone” Pineda (Bellboy), Micah Tangermann (Officer Lightoller), and Tony Winkel (Henry Etches and Officer Pitman) complete the multi-talented, multi-tasking cast.

Musical director Andrew Orbison not only elicits excellent vocals but conducts and plays keyboard in Titanic’s pitch-perfect live band*.

Choreographer Dylan Pass scores points for an invigorating “Doin’ The Latest Rag” and for the strikingly nightmarish moves of “Dressed In Your Pyjamas In The Grand Salon.”

Jonathan Daroca of 4Wall Entertainment lights Titanic quite spectacularly indeed, sound designer Nick Galvan provides an expert mix, Daniel Bride and Jack Freedman score points for their multitude of props, Michon Gruber-Gonzales has designed a great big bunch of character-transforming wigs, and Mark Gamez, Merrill Grady, and Linda Vick have coordinated countless splendid period costumes provided by Costume World Theatrical save the sudden disconcerting anachronism of 1920s fashions popping up for no logical reason in “Doin’ The Latest Rag.”

Caleb Shiba is stage manager.

Like last year’s Ragtime, Titanic The Musical opens a new Candlelight Pavilion Dinner Theater season on an epic note, and the addition of a live orchestra makes it even more of a winner. Expect to be standing up and cheering at curtain calls as you wipe well-deserved tears from your eyes.

*Julian Cantrell, Lila Crosswhite, Ashley Ng, Marcelo Soares, Seungah Waddington

Candlelight Pavilion, 455 W. Foothill Blvd., Claremont.
www.candlelightpavilion.com

–Steven Stanley
January 20, 2019

Tags: Candlelight Pavilion Dinner Theatre, Los Angeles Theater Review, Maury Yeston, Peter Stone