REVIEW: Titaníque loves Céline Dion with all its heart

To conclude Céline: Understood, his superb CBC podcast about Céline Dion, Thomas Leblanc recorded a bunch of superfans singing along to “It’s All Coming Back to Me Now” at the Montreal karaoke bar Club Date. He then listed all his wishes for his icon: That she returns to health, does another Vegas residency, and records two new albums — one in English, one in French.

The hit jukebox musical Titaníque vibrates with the same spirit: It loves Céline with all its heart and just wants more Céline. Its knowingly ludicrous premise is that the singer turns up at a Titanic museum and starts telling visitors the real story about the ill-fated ocean liner — because she was actually there, and the blockbuster 1997 film got some facts wrong. The narrative blossoms into a reenactment of key scenes from the movie with Dion popping in frequently to comment and serenade.

The show is thus its own form of fan wish-fulfillment. James Cameron’s movie may have had Leo and Kate and “I’m the king of the world!” and below-deck Paddywhackery and the nudie painting scene and the band playing on as the ship goes down and Rose saved by a floating door… but you know what it didn’t have enough of? Céline.

Titaníque has no such problems, with 18 Dion hits packed into its 100-minute running time, including, as its show-stopping climax, “My Heart Will Go On.”

A new Canadian staging of Titaníque, co-produced by David and Hannah Mirvish and the Segal Centre, has landed at the CAA Theatre following a Montreal run. It’s brilliantly sung and performed, anchored by a stellar turn from Véronique Claveau, who in addition to an amazing set of pipes and an uncanny capacity to imitate Dion’s quirky expressions and physicality, comes by her French-Canadian accent honestly as the first Québécoise to play the role.

The show was co-written by two of its original stars: Marla Mindelle played Dion and Constantine Rousouli played Jack in the show’s developmental stages in LA and New York and in its off-Broadway production, which opened in 2022 and is still running. A third co-writer, Tye Blue, directed those versions and also helms this Canadian staging, with choreography here (as in New York) by Ellenore Scott.

There’s a kooky campness to the show’s sensibility that echoes Dion’s public persona and which was, for me, consistently funny. Rose’s mother Ruth is played by a male actor (Constant Bernard) in drag. There’s a character named Victor Garber (played by Mike Melino) because the show’s creators, apparently, were just really excited that Victor Garber was in Titanic. And at one point Claveau’s Céline does a mic trick imitating the sound of Formula One racing cars for no apparent reason whatsoever.    

This “hell, why not” ethos is epitomized by Christopher Ning’s superb appearances both as Peabo Bryson (because there must be “Beauty and the Beast”) and a character named Iceberg Bitch, who is somehow divinely both Tina Turner and the famous object that brought the Titanic down.

Where the humour sputtered for me was a streak of unnecessarily crude innuendo, including a slew of seaman/semen jokes and a prop eggplant. The cast hollering out in the show’s final minutes that audiences who loved the show were probably gay also felt a bit on the nose, naming the camp instead of letting it communicate on its own terms. That said, I expect I’d have been less sensitive to these points if I were not in reviewer mode and taken greater advantage of the bar that’s set up right next to the stage: the show has a late-night boozy cabaret vibe that’s best embraced.

Content quibbles aside, the production’s inarguable accomplishment is musical: What an amazing showcase for a Canadian cast’s vocal chops and capacity to deliver character through song. Mariah Campos and Seth Zosky are equally strong as the aggressively wide-eyed ingenues Rose and Jack; Michael Torontow is suavely conniving as Cal, and Erica Peck appropriately indomitable as Molly Brown (her rendition of “All by Myself” is off-the-hook great). Nick Burgess’ four-person band and three backup singers ground the show musically, delivering Nicholas James Connell’s excellent arrangements and orchestrations which bring the familiar Dion songs into the musical theatre idiom.

All of the design and technical elements (set by Gabriel Hainer Evansohn and Grace Labaucher for Iron Bloom; costumes by Alejo Vietti; lights by Paige Seber; sound by Lawrence Schober) are spot-on, and there’s a satisfying in-joke late in the action for those who’ve noted that the physical setting echoes another beloved ship-set tuner. 

The production does its best to combat the CAA’s sterility as a performance venue, with an iceberg-shaped extension of the stage jutting into the audience with a few rows of seating facing it, and characters occasionally running into the aisles to emote directly to audience members.

It’s been a roller-coaster year for the Céline fandom, what with the harrowing doc about her battle with illness dropping in early summer and her triumphant return to full voice on the Eiffel Tower in July. It’s a welcome holiday gift to see out 2024 in the warm embrace of a show whose love for Céline goes on and on.

Titaníque runs at the CAA Theatre until January 12, 2025. Tickets are available here.

Intermission reviews are independent and unrelated to Intermission’s partnered content. Learn more about Intermission’s partnership model here.

WRITTEN BY

Karen Fricker

Karen Fricker is a theatre critic at the Toronto Star, editorial advisor for Intermission magazine, adjunct professor of Dramatic Arts at Brock University, and a member of the Canadian Theatre Critics Association. She previously worked as a critic in London, UK; Dublin, Ireland; and New York City, and has a PhD in theatre studies from Trinity College, Dublin. Her book The Original Stage Productions of Robert Lepage: Making Theatre Global (Manchester University Press) was the winner of the 2022 Canadian Association for Theatre Research’s Ann Saddlemyer Award for the best book in English on a Canadian topic. Her research interests also include contemporary circus and the changing nature of theatre criticism in the digital age.

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