“Titanic”: the inevitable catastrophe is like …

Sing a quick duet instead of running from the tide? A musical about “Titanic” could also have gone wrong. The production at Linz impresses with excellent singers and influential theatre.

Don’t worry, no one is planning on singing Celine Dion’s “My Heart Will Go On”. The fact that the Titanic musical came out the same year as the movie starring Leonardo DiCaprio (1997) is purely a coincidence. Capturing the story of the most famous marine disaster is one thing, and bringing it to the stage is an entirely different challenge. Landestheater Linz took on the gigantic task of five Tony Award-winning plays by Morey Weston (music and lyrics) and Peter Stone and executed it admirably.

You know exactly what to expect when people climb the Titanic, which was hailed as one of the wonders of the world at the time. Every spark of hope on the passenger side, every expectation of America, and the new world, resonates differently in the knowledge of impending disaster. On April 10, 1912 it set off in Southampton, on April 14, just before midnight, it hit an iceberg. It wasn’t a “happy ending” even for the few who were rescued.