A mega-musical that’s like watching the Downton cast crammed into a telephone kiosk

Hats off for theatrical recklessness. The producer Danielle Tarento has taken a $10-million Broadway mega-musical and staged it in the 240-seat Southwark Playhouse. Titanic, by Peter Stone and Maury Yeston, opened in 1997 to howls of critical derision that it merrily ignored. The run lasted for two years. The writers take a comprehensive approach. All the passengers, from first class to steerage, are represented. There are smut-smeared boilermen and bustling waiters. Salts of various ranks are shown alongside the designer, the builder, the financiers, the lot. It’s like watching the Downton cast crammed into a telephone kiosk. This method leaves no room for a catchy storyline to appear. Quite deliberately. The Titanic is more than a doomed keel or a journey into oblivion, it’s an emblem of man’s ambition, daring and self-belief. And these are specifically American virtues. The ship that drowned on its way to New York is a tragic icon for all the hulks and rust buckets that got through safely.

The show’s underlying theme is the construction of American power in the 20th century. Noo technology. The noo world. A noo era. These are the constant refrains of the characters. Only a handful of English figures appear. There’s a stuck-up minor aristocrat escaping her snooty parents. There’s a nervy second-in-command to Cap’n Smith. And there’s a geeky young telegraph operator who may be a closeted proto-gay. And there’s the villain of the piece, J. Bruce Ismay, chairman of the White Star Line. He’s drawn as a pushy coward who bullies Cap’n Smith into cranking the engines up to ramming speed and then, when the tub bashes into the berg, stows away in a lifeboat and survives. (Today he’d be claiming for whiplash injuries as well.) Simon Green gives Ismay’s uppity smarm a subtle dose of sympathy. Great stuff.