Back in 1997, a number of us entertainment journalists were in a quandary about Mike Myers’ newest movie. Why would anyone be making a movie parody of the James Bond franchise so many years after the release of “Dr. No” and “From Russia with Love”? We asked ourselves that question going into the press-junket screening for “Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery.” We did not ask that question the next day during interviews with Myers and others. “Austin Powers” delivered. It was really funny. That’s all that mattered.
So it goes for the stage musical “Titanique,” which opened Tuesday at Off Broadway’s Daryl Roth Theatre after a run at the Asylum Theater earlier this year. “Titanique” delivers. It’s really funny. And it doesn’t matter that the film “Titanic” is celebrating its 25th anniversary this month. Much more important is how alternately silly and nasty and irreverent and delicious the writers Marla Mindelle, Constantine Rousouli and Tye Blue are at sending up the current crop of Broadway jukebox musicals and musicals based on classic movies. In other words, “Titanic” the movie may be a quarter century old, but the subject of this stage parody is practically every musical now performing on a Broadway stage.
Tye Blue also directs, and he knows that in the theater the funniest effects are also the cheapest. The “Titanique” set design by Gabriel Hainer Evansohn and Grace Laubacher presents a perfectly respectable cruise ship deck. Late in the show, a joke is made about it being ripped off from some third-rate production of “Anything Goes.” Far more tawdry is the way in which Blue stages the movie’s biggest moments using the tackiest of props. As for the big iceberg, that villain is delivered by the gifted actor-singer Avoince Hoyles, who convincingly mimics a guest star whose identify will not be revealed here. Even more rollover funny is the contest staged to decide who’s getting into the ship’s two — count ’em, two — lifeboats. Alejo Vietti’s costumes for the male contestants define “Auf Wiedersehen” as spoken on “Project Runway.”
Playing the young lovers Jack and Rose, Constantine Rousouli and Carrie St. Louis are arguably even juicier eye candy than their movie doppelgangers, Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet. Certainly, they are funnier and sing better. (Quick, name a musical comedy starring either Leo or Kate.) With Rousouli and St. Louis in the leads, “Titanique” keeps us lusting and laughing, often at the same time.
In one sense, “Titanique” is truly retro. It took me back to the best days of Charles Ludlam’s Ridiculous Theatrical Company. In that world of camp gone wild, heterosexuality was always the biggest joke of all, but the gay characters were given equal time to be ridiculed. In today’s musical theater, LGBTQ characters (we’re talking to you, “Jagged Little Pill,” “Some Like It Hot” and “& Juliet”) too often serve as objects to be beatified. Thankfully, “Titanique” takes no such pathetic prisoners. Russell Daniels’ money-hungry mother, John Riddle’s evil boyfriend, Desiree Rodriguez’s Molly Brown and Frankie Grande’s shipbuilder/Victor Garber all make being gay (in all its many definitions) funny again.
The only bad bit of timing for this show is its choice of narrator and host. “Titanique” mines the song catalogue of Celine Dion, played to egomaniacal, self-deprecating perfection by Marla Mindelle. (The singer was recently diagnosed with a rare neurological condition that forced her to postpone a planned 2023 concert tour.) But to paraphrase what Bette Davis once said about the recently departed Joan Crawford, “Just because bad things happen to a person doesn’t mean they change.”
