Titanic

They said it couldn't be done. They said you couldn't have a Broadway musical about the Titanic. The very notion is laughable. You couldn't have people on a stage singing and dancing about a tragedy. And you especially couldn't have one where every single person in the audience knows the ending as they take their seats. But Peter Stone, who wrote the story and the book, and Maury Yeston, who composed the score and wrote the lyrics, pressed on. They had a much higher opinion of the musical-going public than the experts did. But then one complication followed another, expenses for the lavish production grew and grew -- so much so that Stone and Yeston and their producers knew they couldn't afford to have the usual out-of-town tryouts. They'd have to open cold before a first-night Broadway audience, with all the naysayers sharpening their pencils to a needle point right out front. And then in April 1997, almost exactly 85 years after the Titanic touched bottom in the North Atlantic, Titanic the musical set sail at the Lunt-Fontanne theatre for its maiden voyage. And it didn't sink. It soared. Audiences loved it. Even the expert naysayers had to backtrack. It was, all agreed, a glorious, ground-breaking Broadway musical. It was in the grand tradition of those other "daring" musicals which in the years since the Titanic's sinking had transformed the American musical from a tawdry girlie show with Tin Pan Alley ditties into a major American art form -- Jerome Kern's Show Boat, Rodgers and Hammerstein's Oklahoma! (also "sure" to tank), Bernstein's West Side Story (one of the first musical tragedies). Stone and Yeston's Titanic had now carried that noble tradition even farther, into the next century. Finally, at the Tony awards, the crowning was completed -- Titanic swept the board, winning an astonishing five statuettes. In an odd way, Titanic the Musical reversed the fortunes of Titanic the Ocean Liner. The latter was given every chance for success, and failed. The former was proclaimed dead in the water before it opened, but became a smash hit. Here now, lavishly illustrated with over a hundred color photos of the glorious, thrilling production, are the multi-award-winning book and lyrics of Titanic. One of the lyrics in the show goes, "How Did They Build Titanic?" The same question -- with the same note of astonishment -- could be asked of the musical's incredible birthing. Titanic -- the Complete Book of the Musical also provides Peter Stone and Maury Yeston'

Year

2000

Language

English

Publisher

Applause Books

Editions

1

Pages

178

ISBN

9781557833556

Data source: Wikidata