Theater: Down with the Ship

NEW York has the most sophisticated street beggars in the world, so I guess it’s not too strange that when I ventured out onto 46th Street during the intermission of Titanic a guy with a white paper cup and a predatory grin sidled up to me and said, “Don’t worry, the second half is much better.” He didn’t have quite the style of the black panhandlers on 23rd Street who bow and scrape outside a synagogue, wearing yarmulkes and opening the heavy doors for elderly ladies, but he had obviously done his homework. The run was barely under way and there was already a street buzz: stick it out until the second act. Wonderful things happen there. In the great tradition of sentimental opera, doomed people sing while dying. Middle-class matrons go home swollen-eyed and satisfied. Broadway breathes easier, because that dying but beloved dinosaur called the musical lives on in its carefully constructed cage, like the giant pandas quarantined in the National Zoo.

The truth is that Titanic is not terrible, but it’s not terribly anything. Dreadfully costumed ocean-going stereotypes spend the first 15 minutes singing about how big the ship is, craning their necks up toward the ceiling of the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre like the rubbernecking German tourists just outside in Times Square, and then we get another 15 of snappy patter about how the ship is going too fast for a maiden voyage, so that the evil ship owner can set a new speed record. (All together now: Oooooooooooo.) All the time, we’re eavesdropping on three rather dull parties-first class (millionaires with waxed mustaches and cigars), second class (social-climbing Midwesterners), and steerage (good-hearted immigrants who sing about America’s streets being paved with gold). As the elderly captain is pressured to increase his speed, ominous messages arrive from other ships, reporting large icebergs at various locations. Yet the captain chooses “the northern route,” to make better time. All together now: Aaaaaaaaaahhhh.

JB

About the Author

John Bloom

Featured Tags

NEW York has the most sophisticated street beggars in the world, so I guess it’s not too strange that when I ventured out onto 46th Street during the intermission of Titanic a guy with a white paper cup and a predatory grin sidled up to me and said, “Don’t worry, the second half is much better.” He didn’t have quite the style of the black panhandlers on 23rd Street who bow and scrape outside a synagogue, wearing yarmulkes and opening the heavy doors for elderly ladies, but he had obviously done his homework. The run was barely under way and there was already a street buzz: stick it out until the second act. Wonderful things happen there. In the great tradition of sentimental opera, doomed people sing while dying. Middle-class matrons go home swollen-eyed and satisfied. Broadway breathes easier, because that dying but beloved dinosaur called the musical lives on in its carefully constructed cage, like the giant pandas quarantined in the National Zoo.

The truth is that Titanic is not terrible, but it’s not terribly anything. Dreadfully costumed ocean-going stereotypes spend the first 15 minutes singing about how big the ship is, craning their necks up toward the ceiling of the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre like the rubbernecking German tourists just outside in Times Square, and then we get another 15 of snappy patter about how the ship is going too fast for a maiden voyage, so that the evil ship owner can set a new speed record. (All together now: Oooooooooooo.) All the time, we’re eavesdropping on three rather dull parties-first class (millionaires with waxed mustaches and cigars), second class (social-climbing Midwesterners), and steerage (good-hearted immigrants who sing about America’s streets being paved with gold). As the elderly captain is pressured to increase his speed, ominous messages arrive from other ships, reporting large icebergs at various locations. Yet the captain chooses “the northern route,” to make better time. All together now: Aaaaaaaaaahhhh.