B'way Review: Titanique; Cats: The Jellicle Ball

The cast of Titanique.
Credit: Evan Zimmerman for
MurphyMade.

“This is where the story gets kooky crazy,” announces Marla Mindelle as a kooky crazy version of Canadian songstress and power-ballad queen Celine Dion halfway through Titanique, the zany and wildly entertaining parody musical now at the St. James after long runs Off-Broadway and around the world. The show has been pretty nuts up to the point when Mindelle, who also collaborated on the book with co-star Constantine Rousouli and director Tye Blue, issues that warning and it gets even nuttier from then on. It’s a fun, wacky ride stuffed with enough pop-culture references to keep a crowd full of Broadway, TV and movie fans howling. The question is can this niche show fill a large Main Stem house for a profitable run? Well, it kept me guffawing for most of its 100 minutes. There were only a few lulls (indicated later in the review) amid a tidal wave of hilarity. 

The premise is Cuckoo-for-Coco-Coco-Puffs and ingenious. It’s like an extended SNL sketch. Fortunately, just when you think Mindelle, Rousouli and Blue have run out of ideas, they tap another vein of goofiness and comic gold pours out. The terrifically inventive authors imagine what would happen if Dion actually were on the Titanic just because she sang the theme song from James Cameron’s 1997 Oscar-winning film about the fatal shipwreck. Mindelle as a mindlessly manic version of the singer inserts herself into the story which also includes meta allusions to Broadway musicals, reality TV and pop music. Even the purposely tacky set by Gabriel Hainer Evansohn and Grace Launcher for Iron Bloom Creative Production is a tribute to flashy game shows and TV specials.

Constantine Rousouli and Melissa Barrera
in Titanique.
Credit: Evan Zimmerman for MurphyMade

Employing Dion’s top hits as the score (Nicholas James Connell expertly provides music supervision, orchestrations and arrangements), this satiric looney tune retells Cameron’s screenplay through a show-biz-queer-angle lens. Rose and Jack (delightfully dopey Melissa Barrera and Rousoluli, parodying Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio) are still star-crossed lovers from radically different social strata, but there are significant alterations elsewhere. Rose’s domineering mother is played in drag by an outrageously outraged Jim Parsons who appears to be having the time of his life stepping out of the Sheldon Cooper persona from The Big Bang Theory. (Watch him go to town in a diva fit, threatening the orchestra and kicking cut-outs of Patti LuPone and Carol Channing.) 

Jim Parsons, Frankie Grande, and
Deborah Cox in Titanique.
Credit: Evan Zimmerman for MurphyMade

The captain is now flamboyantly gay and referred to as Victor Garber, the actor who played Thomas Andrews, the Titanic’s designer—not the captain—in the movie, but never mind. Frankie Grande of Big Brother fame is a campy hoot in the role as is John Riddle as Rose’s obnoxious rich fiancee (here endowed with a taste for make-up and jewelry.) Deborah Cox displays impressive comic chops and pipes as Molly Brown, aka Kathy Bates, the blustery socialite who famously survived the wreck. I was surprised there was no reference to Tammy Grimes or Debbie Reynolds in The Unsinkable Molly Brown, but I guess the demographic is too young for that 1960s Broadway musical and movie adaptation. 

The only bit that gets a bit tired is the overuse of Mindelle as Dion hogging the spotlight from Jack and Rose as she belts out ballad after ballad. But Midelle is such a gifted comedienne, Blue’s direction is so sure and well-timed, and Rousouli and Barrera’s reactions are so perfect, the segments are different enough to elicit laughs each time.  

Layton Williams in Titanique.
Credit: Evan Zimmerman for MurphyMade.

The “kooky crazy” part arrives when the ship is about to hit that infamous iceberg, personified by the fabulous Layton Williams in drag as Tina Turner sporting a snow-white wig and outfit (Alejo Vietti provided the wonderfully outrageous costumes.)  The crash becomes a wild musical number set to “River Deep, Mountain High” staged by Blue and choreographer Ellenore Scott with bubbly abandon. It’s just one insane moment in an evening of joyful mayhem.

Some theatergoers have complained on line that this type of show does not belong on Broadway and should not have ventured beyond cabaret and basement stages. Anything belongs on Broadway as long as audiences come to see it and Titanique has as much right to sail onto the Main Stem as any other production. 

The cast of Cats: The Jellicle Ball.
Credit: Matthew Murphy and
Evan Zimmerman for MurphyMade

Cats: The Jellicle Ball is another Off-Broadway show with a queer sensibility in a Broadway transfer. Directors Zhailon Levingston and Bill Rauch reimagined Andrew Lloyd Webber’s smash-hit musical version of T.S. Eliot’s collection of poems Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats as a drag ball. The show was a hit last season at the Perelman Performing Arts Center and is now ensconced at the Broadhurst. The production has lost some of the intimacy and rawness of the Perelman staging, but the directors have taught this old cat more than a few new tricks.

I was never a fan of Trevor Nunn’s original staging and Lloyd Webber’s initial concept. The essentially plotless show consisted of actors in heavy feline make-up performing individual numbers based on their particular kitty’s identifying characteristic—theatre cat, burglar cat, gourmand feline, etc.—in a junkyard. The slender narrative was that their leader Old Deuteronomy would chose one lucky kitty to ascend to “the heavy-side layer” on a flying tire and start a new life. Lloyd Webber’s catchy tunes set to Eliot’s cute poems somehow translated into record runs on Broadway, in the West End and around the world, but it was never my dish of cream. Levingston and Rauch transform the action into a real, vital competition and at the Perelman Center it felt like we were in a downtown club cheering on an outsider community of drag artists. 

Andre De Shields in Cats: The Jellicle Ball.
Credit: Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman
for MurphyMade.

That element of edginess is somewhat lost on jazzy, snazzy Broadway with audience members buying expensive fans and cat-ears. But the sense of community and celebration of diversity remain. Set designer Rachel Hauck has refitted the Broadhurst with onstage seating and a runway to approximate a club atmosphere. The directors and choreographers (Omari Wiles and Arturo Lyons) accommodate the new space with ingenuity and costume designer Qween Jean’s spectacular garb remain stunning. 

The cast is still purr-fect with the valuable Andre DeShields commanding and regal as Old Deuteronomy, Junior Labeija endearing as Gus the theater cat, “Tempress” Chasity Moore heartbreaking as Grizabella, Sydney James Harcourt virile as Rum Tum Tugger, Robert “Silk” Mason elegant as the magician Mistoffelees, Leiomy slinky and sinister as Macavity the mystery cat, and Dudney Joseph Jr. commanding as the master of ceremonies Munkustrap. This Cats is set for only a limited run, but deserves to have as many lives as its predecessor. 

Titanique: April 12—July 12. St. James Theater, 246 W. 44th St., NYC. Running time: 100 minutes with no intermission. us.atgtickets.com.

Cats: The Jellicle Ball: April 7—Sept. 6. Broadhurst Theater, 235 W. 44th St., NYC. Running time: two hours and 20 mins. including intermission. telecharge.com.