Titanic Original Cast CD

In an Epilogue, the survivors picked up by the Carpathia numbly retell what
had once been Mr. Andrews'dream (In Every Age reprise). The living are
joined by their lost loved-ones in a tableau recapturing the optimistic spirit
of the Ocean Dock on sailing day (Finale).

A Word From Peter Stone

The sinking of the Titanic in the early hours of April 15, 1912, remains the quintessential
disaster of this century. A total of 1,517 souls men, women and children - lost their
lives (only 711 survived). The fact that the finest, largest, strongest ship in the world-
called in fact, the "unsinkable" ship - should have been lost during its maiden voyage
is so incredible that, had it not actually happened, no author would have dared to
contrive it.

But the catastrophe had social ramifications that went far beyond that night's events.
For the first time since the beginning of the industrial revolution early in the 19th
Century, bigger faster and stronger did not prove automatically to be better. Suddenly
the very essence of "progress" had to be questioned; might the advancement of
technology not always be progress?

Nor was this the only question arising from the disaster. The accomodations of the
ship, divided into 1st, 2nd and 3rd classes, mirrored almost exactly the class structure
(upper, middle and lower) of the English- speaking world. But when the wide
discrepancy between the number of survivors from each of the women in 1st Class
were saved while 155 women and children from the 2nd and 3rd Class (mostly 3rd)
drowned there was a new, long overdue scrutiny of the prevailing social system and its
values.

It is not an exaggeration to state that the 19th Century, with its social structures, its
extravagant codes of honor and sacrifice, and its unswerving belief that God favored
the rich, ended that night.

The musical play Titanic examines the causes, the conditions and the characters involved
in this ever-fascinating drama. This is the actual story of that ship- of her officers,
crew and passengers, to be sure- but she will not, as has happened so many times
before, serve as merely the background against which fictional, melodramatic narratives
are recounted. The central character of our Titanic is the Titanic herself.

Composer-lyricist Maury Yeston and I had worked together before- we were both
called in to rescue the musical Grand Hotel which was threatening to close in Boston
during its out-of-town tryout. We fully enjoyed our collaboration and it apparently had
a positive result: Grand Hotel ran over 1,000 performances on Broadway. During that
happy time we discovered, by total coincidence, that both of us had been harboring
magnificent dreams of turning the enduring myth of the Titanic into a musical drama.
We gladly pooled our resources and set to work almost immediately.

That was over four years ago. The saga was a difficult one to synthesize - there were
so many characters, so many incidents, so many themes. But we moved forward with
remarkable agreement and yes, even a mystic sort of symbiosis whereby one of us
would hit upon a new idea that the other would intuit even before hearing it. A lot of
our early work was done over lunch in a small Chinese restaurant on Second Avenue
and 70th Street - to the chagrin of the waiters who had to endure us occupying their
tables until late in the afternoon. We even began grading the importance of our
characters by placing them in Column A and Column B. But from the beginning a
definite pattern emerged- our main characters would be presented in groups of three.

The first trio are common seamen- a stoker, a lookout, and a radioman; each having
first-hand knowlege of the three natural forces that were instrumental in destroying the
ship:speed, visibity and ice.

And then three uncommon men- the owner, the builder and the captain; each revealing
a flaw of character: greed, compromise and compliance. When these faults collide
with the ineluctable forces of nature, the ship's fate is sealed. In classical tragedy,
this collision is inevitable. That it occurred in reality is astounding. And legendary.

And later, three emigrants in steerage: three Irish girls, all named Kate, who are
bound for a new life in the new world, where very few from this class would ever
set foot.

Surrounding these core characters are the rest of the officers and crew (the latter
divided into seamen and hotel staff), all of them attending to the passengers.

In the 1st Class were almost every American multimillionaire- Astor, Guggenheim,
Straus, Thayer, Widener and more - powerful men who, with their wives and families,
were the regular and frequent passengers on the great transatlantic liners. Only
Vanderbuilt and Morgan missed the sailing, but both had booked, then at the last
minute, cancelled.. (They had booked space for this maiden voyage because they
had a perfect right to be there.)

Second Class was filled with merchants, professionals, tourists and the socially
ambitious who wanted nothing more than participation in this glittering event.
They had booked passage so they could rub up against the 1st class; perhaps so they
could rub up against the 1st Class; perhaps some of that golden charisma would even
rub off.

In 3rd Class (commonly called steerage), there were the emigrants from the old world,
eager to reach the new, Irish, Turkish, Italian, Scandinavian - they were fleeting
poverty and hopelessness, in search of opportunity and the gold the streets of
America were purported to be paved with. Eating more and better food then they
were used to, they spent for the first time in their lives, four full days in idleness.
They had been assigned to the ship by lottery and didn't really care which one it was,
as long as it got them to America.

With our characters set, and the action laid out, Act One would be completely
celebratory- this was after all, the maiden voyage of the largest, grandest and safest
ship in history. Act Two would be quite the opposite: a progression among both the
passengers and crew from denial to doubt, to realization, to acceptance, and finally to
horror and panic as the extent of the catastrophe became more and more evident.

We were ready to move on to the next stage: production. We took our show to the
Dodgers (named for the team they all followed in Brooklyn when the three partners
were young) whose previous hits included The Who's Tommy and Guys and Dolls.
They gave it, not only their unstinting devotion, but their lavish financial support as well.
Their commitment was, and remains total.

As our director we chose an Englishman, Richard Jones, an artist mostly unknown to
Broadway but who was widely known in Europe where he had mainly directed
opera-he had recently mounted a widely praised production of Wagner's complete
Ring Cyle at London's Covent Garden. It was a wise choice. His instinct in selecting
actors is phenomenal, and under his strong guidance, we engaged the finest group of
actors-singers (or are they singer-actors?) it has ever been our pleasure to work with.
And Richard molded them into a tight seamless company.

He also brought in his own designer, Stewart Laing, a Scotsman whose overall
concept -sets as well as costumes- was overpoweringly vivid, daring and exciting.
He was determined to show the ship actually sinking on stage- and his success in
creating this mechanical marvel is cheered at every performance.

We enjoyed a workshop production (with only twelve actors playing all the parts)
some months ago before we went into rehearsal. Then, in January 1997, we went
into full rehearsal period (with forty actors), followed by our move to the Lunt-Fontanne
Theatre where we had four weeks of previews to alter, adjust and otherwise
fine-tune our show. We opened there on April 23 and we're happy to report that our
ship, unlike the tragic original, not only triumphantly arrived in New York right on
schedule, but continues to sail happily on. And on.

Act One covers the first four days of the maiden cruise; during that time the
passengers in every class were carefree, enjoying an uncommonly smooth crossing,
growing increasingly eager for their arrival in New York. On the bridge, the officers
were experiencing a fruitless voyage; the new ship was behaving perfectly. True,
there were warnings from several other ships in the vicinity of ice fields and large
bergs straying father south than normal for that time of the year, but there seemed to
be little if any concern. After all, what could happen to such a ship? Wasn't she
constructed with sixteen watertight compartments which could be mechanically
closed off in the unlikely case of a breach?

True, the owner of the White Star Line, Bruce Ismay, was making a pest of himself,
continually hectoring Captain E. J. Smith to increase speed. Ismay wanted a record
for this maiden voyage, the publicity of which would help recapture some of the luster
(and business) lost to the Cunard ships.

And true, the captain, having already retired after four distinguished decades at sea
and only returning under pressure to command this maiden voyage, had wearily
bowed to his employer's pressure and raised the ship's speed to its maximum- 22 1/2
knots.

And also true, the builder of the ship - Thomas Andrews, aboard for this premiere
crossing, had designed the watertight bulkheads to rise only as high as "C" Deck,
thereby providing the 1st Class passengers above with roomier accommodations.

With these displays of arrogance casting prudence over-board, the stage was set.

At 11:40 on Sunday April 14, the sea was calm, the night was moonless, the water
and sea both near freezing. The lookout spotted the massive iceberg a little too late-
the customary binoculars were inexplicably missing from the crow's nest- and the ship
reacted a little too slowly. The berg scraped the side of the ship beneath the waterline
slicing her open like a tin of sardines - in what we now know was a series of six,
sliver-thin slits, breaching six of the watertight compartments. The ship was at that
moment doomed. It would only be a matter of two-and-a-half hours.

The passengers, especially those in 1st class who had, for the most part, not even felt
the impact, refused, at first, to believe there was any danger. (Those in steerage knew
there was trouble-the water was pouring into their dormitory cabins.) But as the ship
began to list and more and more severly, it was no longer possible to deny the
inevitable.

There were only twenty lifeboats. To accommodate every soul aboard, there should
have been fifty-four, but that many would have taken up much too much 1st Class
deck space. Even so, the first couple of boats were lowered nearly empty-who in their
right mind could leave the large warm, brightly lit ocean liner for a tiny open boat
bobbing around in the cold, dark, dark, sea?

When the last of the boats had departed, over fifteen hundred persons were still left
aboard, including every last one of the American millionaires (and the wife of one,
Isidor Straus, who refused to leave her husband's side.)

And the band played on, to the very end.

When it came, the stern of the great ship rose to a height of two hundred feet-
twenty stories- above the ocean's surface. She stood that way for a few brief minutes,
on end almost perpendicular, with over a thousand screaming people desparately
hopelessly clinging to it. And then she plunged straight down.

In a matter of seconds, the largest moving object on earth had totally disappeared.

- Peter Stone

Newsday, Sunday August 3rd, 1997

Scoring Broadways Latest Discs

A Crop of new original cast recordings has arrived in record shops led by
the epic "Titanic".

By Fred Cohn

Titanic, The Life and Steel Pier slugged it out for Best Musical at the Tony Awards; now
they're competing on record store shelves.

Titanic's five Tony's including Best Musical-seemed to vindicate a show whose propects
had once seemed dim, indeed. The mavens had expected Titanic to sink as quickly as its
namesake; instead buoyed by its Tony victory, the musical is sailing toward a long run.

The show's original cast CD, on the RCA Victor label, is a winner too. While Maury
Yeston's score doesn't seem likely to yield any obvious hits, it's still a piece of proficient
musical theatre writing. Titanic presents a crowded dramatic canvas, with characters on the
ship's crew and all three classes of passage, yet Yeston's songs manage to keep the
narrative threads distinct and intelligible.

Of course you can't write a show called Titanic without laying on the tragic irony pretty
thick: One's heart sinks at the beginning as the sailors inevitably sing "I'll be back before a
fortnight has passed!" But as the score progresses, Yeston manages to convey the pathos
of these doomed lives with admirable delicacy, reaching its lyrical apex in "The Night Was
Alive" a lullaby sung by the ship's radio man (Martin Moran) in the eerie moments before
the great ship hits the iceberg.

This is one of the best sounding albums ever, thanks to Jonathan Tunick's lushk, Ravel-like
orchestrations. Over the years, Tunick has won acclaim for his work on Stephen
Sondheim's musicals, and it's only fitting that his masterful contribution to Titanic should be
rewarded with the first ever Best Orchestration Tony.