Poignancy, thy name is Titanic. With a series of increasingly triumphant songs about the grandeur and posterity of the ship and its maiden voyage, the last show of the RPI Players’ 76th season brought every single person in the very full audience into sharing the boundless optimism of those boarding the ill-fated ship, and then pangs of despair, knowing what was to come.
The play itself, a Broadway musical, was of course well-written. The challenge to the Players was to make a show of such titanic scale work within a budget that, next to that of a Broadway theater, is positively minuscule. Well, it worked, and it worked stunningly. The casting in this play was excellently done, every actor performed wonderfully, and the addition of an orchestra pit—complete with a very talented orchestra—provided an element of distinction not often seen in Players productions.
Another welcome addition was a small projection screen on the topmost curtain fringe, onto which was projected the location, date and time of each scene as the changes occurred. Without this feature, it is this reviewer’s judgment that the audience would not have been able to follow the action quite so clearly.
The music was, of course, wonderful, and the people who sang each of the songs imbued each one with the unmitigated passion and energy needed to carry a show like Titanic. Mike Hall ’06 in particular distinguished himself in this regard, in his last show at RPI. The only fault was that at times, the orchestra played more loudly than the actors could sing, making the words difficult to hear.
The technical work on this play was magnificent. Between the immense anticipation of the audience and reports of major difficulties with set construction, opening night could easily have been a nightmare. When the curtain went up, however, magic happened, and not only had all of the technical problems been resolved, but the emotional effect of the show came through as clear as the warning sirens that the Titanic did not have. From the deliciously tortuous sound of the metal gashing itself to ribbons on the iceberg to the smooth slide of a cart across and off the stage during the climactic scene, and much, much more, the play was marvelously powerful.
What really drove the show home was the intensity of its final scenes. The separation of two dozen passengers from their significant others into the lifeboats was heart-rending, and left the audience imagining the hundreds of times that such moments must have occurred on the real ship, over and over again.
But nothing compared to the very last scene, where the survivors, draped in blankets from the rescue ship, wander slowly among a freeze-frame of those who died, standing just as they were during the opening numbers. Tragic, devastating, anguished; none of these words do it justice.
Go, and feel its power for yourself April 27, 28, and 29 and 8 pm.
