Titanique review: comedy is just the tip of iceberg in new musical

Celine Dion’s songs will go on, and on, if the newest hit musical about one of the great maritime tragedies is anything to go by.

Drew Weston, as Jack, sings a number with the Australian company of Titanique

MUSICAL THEATRE

Titanique. The Grand Electric, Sydney, September 19.

Let’s get this out of the way early. There are more than a few jokes about seamen in Titanique, if you get my drift. The show and its fabulous cast aren’t afraid to go low for a laugh, or indeed high, or medium, or whatever level at which a laugh might be mined.

Titanique is, as they say, as camp as Christmas but not just that. It’s smart, sharp, deeply eccentric and a truly happy night out.

Another bonus: Titanique, which comprehensively takes the mickey out of James Cameron’s epic film Titanic, manages to reprise the doomed voyage in half Cameron’s running time, including detours. And it’s funnier. Way, way funnier.

The premise is this. Celine Dion (Marney McQueen, armed with endearing physical and vocal Dion-isms) anachronistically claims to have been on the Titanic and muscles her way into the narrative. She was, after all, responsible for the film’s weepie closing ballad My Heart Will Go On so has skin in the game.

Wearing a Las Vegas residency-ready gown — silver sequins, thigh-high slit — and blasting the fourth wall into oblivion, McQueen’s Dion has a song for just about any situation.

There is stiff competition for the spotlight, however, from young lovers Rose (Georgina Hopson) and Jack (Drew Weston) and Rose’s supercilious fiancé Cal (Kane Sheppard-Fletcher), who urges the ship’s captain (Matt Lee, hilarious) to go full speed ahead so Cal can make a hairdressing appointment in New York.

Lee, by the way, is simultaneously the captain and Victor Garber, the actor who played Titanic designer Thomas Andrews in Cameron’s film. Meta-theatrics anyone?

Above all there is Stephen Anderson as Rose’s take-no-prisoners mother. Putting the Ruth into ruthless, he is peerlessly costumed in menswear, pearls and a kind of fascinator fashioned from seagulls.

There is the iceberg to contend with, too, here represented by a Tina Turner lookalike (Abu Kebe) singing River Deep, Mountain High while displaying a spectacular set of gams. They also play The Seaman. It’s a versatile crew, rounded out by Abigail Dixon in a terrific professional debut as the unsinkable Molly Brown, aka Kathy Bates.

It’s fast-paced, high-wire stuff kept impressively under control by top talent. You know how some theatre is actor-proof? This isn’t it.

There’s not a lot that’s off limits in Titanique’s frequent extracurricular excursions. References to local matters of interest (Sunset Boulevard) and current politics (cats and dogs, the consumption thereof) give a taste – sorry – of the range.

Not every jibe hits the target but there may well be changes from performance to performance. Some improvisation is promised and world events move quickly.

What won’t change is the exclusive emphasis on songs from Dion’s repertoire, sung thrillingly by all on board, and set pieces such as the gaining of places in one of the Titanic’s too-few lifeboats. (It’s decided by a lip-synching competition that owes much to RuPaul’s Drag Race.)

Co-writers Marla Mindelle, Constantine Rousouli and its director Tye Blue are enjoying big Off-Broadway success with Titanique. Sydney is its first international port of call and you couldn’t find a better fit.

The venue is the delightfully louche Grand Electric, accessed via a passageway between buildings on Sydney’s Cleveland Street. Those of a certain age will remember it as The Performance Space of old but theatregoers yet to taste its pleasures will find it easy enough to locate. Just look for the sailors out the front.

Tickets: $75-$160. Seating is general admission within the selected section. Bookings: online. Duration: 90 minutes, no interval. Booking to November 3.