Camp take on Titanic film celebrates Celine Dion
By Nyk Carnsew
Actress Marney McQueen will take on the role of superstar Celine Dion in new musical Titanique, which reimagines James Cameron’s 1997 screen blockbuster Titanic as an absurdist queer celebration of the pop legend.
The comedic stage production parodies the iconic film about the world’s most famous nautical tragedy. Dion, played by McQueen, narrates and appears in the story as a passenger on the titular cruise ship.
The actress, whose credits include Neighbours and Home and Away, is no stranger to absurd comedic roles, having played a celebrity bikini waxer in her show Rosa Waxes Lyrical.
Marney McQueen will play pop legend Celine Dion.Credit: James Morgan
But Titanique is her first major role in close to a decade after she started a family and bought a pub on the NSW Central Coast with her husband.
“We’ve been running that for seven years and it’s just been too hard for me to do a show in a capital city,” she said. “So for me now, I feel like I’m also making my comeback.”
Drew Weston, who plays lead male character Jack, said the show will tell the audience what “really” happened aboard the Titanic, playing with the expectations set by Cameron’s film.
“The idea of Jack is still there, but I bring my own kind of ‘isms’ to it,” Weston said. “Let’s just say he’s a little bit campier than what you’re used to.”
Smouldering Weston, whose credits include the stage show Cruel Intentions: The ’90s Musical, stars opposite Georgina Hopson as Rose in Titanique. Other roles include Stephen Anderson as Ruth, Abigail Dixon as Molly Brown and Abu Kebe as the iceberg.
Titanique was first performed in Los Angeles in 2017 before achieving an off-Broadway premiere in 2022 where it won multiple outstanding musical awards.
The show is directed and co-written by Tye Blue, of RuPaul’s Drag Race Fame, and will premiere in Australia at the Grand Electric theatre in central Sydney on September 12.
AAP