Latest news with #Titanique
ABC News
26-05-2025
- Entertainment
- ABC News
Pamela Rabe tackles an iconic role + a kid's point of view on stage
It's one of those roles which great actors have on their to-do list: Winnie in the play Happy Days by Samuel Beckett. Winnie starts the play buried up to her waist in dirt. In Act 2 she's buried up to her neck! Acclaimed actor Pamela Rabe tell us what makes this such an iconic play and how she approached it as both co-director and star of Happy Days for the Sydney Theatre Company. In the play POV (Point of View), 11-year-old Bub directs a pair of adult actors on stage, to re-enact scenes from her life. There's a catch: it's the first time the actors have seen the script, and Bub is filming them for a documentary. This innovative work by collective re:group is all about how a kid experiences the mental illness of a parent. We chat to young actors Mabelle Rose and Edie Whitehead, who play Bub, and director Solomon Thomas. What if Celine Dion wasn't just the torch-bearing soundtrack to Titanic — but the main character? That's the premise of a hilarious musical parody called Titanique, which originated off Broadway and has since proven very popular here in Australia. A cast of 11 joins The Stage Show, led by powerhouse Marney McQueen.
Times
21-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Times
Shucked review — this clever screwball musical is perfect escapism
★★★★★These are bleak times, but the good news is that you can escape it all by visiting three new or new-ish shows that all use gloriously funny meta humour. The Mischief Theatre team romp through every espionage joke under the sun in The Comedy About Spies, while the cast of Titanique mercilessly send up James Cameron's ocean-liner bombast. And now, at Regent's Park Open Air Theatre, you can wallow in a screwball musical putting Grand Ole Opry pieties through the shredder. Shucked, which opened on Broadway two years ago, is the hilarious opening shot in Drew McOnie's inaugural season as artistic director. It delivers a diet of puns — clever, raunchy and sometimes knowingly cheap — as two lovers take a wrong
Time Out
05-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Time Out
May 2025 events calendar for Chicago
Every night in our dreams, we've wished for this moment: Titanique the Musical is cruising into Chicago! The smash-hit comedy, in which "the music of Céline Dion makes sweet Canadian love with the film Titanic," is gearing up for a Chicago run as a co-production from Porchlight Music Theatre and Broadway in Chicago, with performances set for the Broadway Playhouse at Water Tower Place this spring. Led by actress Clare Kennedy McLaughlin, who will play the French-Canadian pop diva herself, Chicago's Titanique will retell the fictionalized story of Titanic's sinking from James Cameron's 1997 Blockbuster, albeit using Dion's famous power ballads to push the plot forward. Featured tunes include 'Because You Loved Me,' 'All By Myself,' 'To Love You More,' 'Tell Him,' 'Beauty and the Beast" and two of Dion's most-loved covers, 'River Deep, Mountain High' and 'I Drove All Night," culminating, of course, in that radio juggernaut 'My Heart Will Go On.'
Time Out
05-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Time Out
All aboard! Titanique has finally called a closing date for record-breaking Sydney run
After more than 300 Céline-belting, wig-snatching, laugh-out-loud performances, Titanique is preparing to leave the dock one last time. This June, the outrageous and award-winning musical parody will unberth from Sydney's Art-Deco-style cabaret den, The Grand Electric, sailing off into the sunset — never to return to Australian shores (unless, of course, an iceberg demands an encore). Since Titanique opened in October, this Harbour City exclusive has become one of the hottest tickets in town, with our critic saying that this 'completely unserious' sequin-filled extravaganza will 'have you laughing so hard your cheeks hurt' in a rave five-star review. But unlike Céline's eternal ballad, this show will not go on. After several sold-out season extensions, the final performance has finally been called for June 22, 2025. So it's time to hit up your girls, gays, theys, and enthusiastic straight men, because you have a limited time left to experience this cult musical phenomenon before it sails away forever. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Alannah Le Cross (nèe Maher) (@alannurgh) For the uninitiated, this off-Broadway splash-hit is a gloriously camp, spectacularly unhinged Olivier Award-winning send-up of James Cameron's cinematic juggernaut that rewrites the tragic tale of Jack and Rose, putting none other than the Queen of Power Ballads herself – Céline Dion – at the helm. With cabaret icon Marney McQueen leading the Aussie cast as Céline Dion, this ridiculously fun show is never the same twice (in the lead up to the recent election, she had audiences cracking up over an impromptu sketch taking the piss out of a certain political party that was over-eager with the texts – watch it here). The cast also features Georgina Hopson (Phantom of the Opera on Sydney Harbour) as Rose Dewitt-Bukater (who we've also seen doing a spectacular job stepping in to play Céline!), Drew Weston as Jack Dawson, and a standout ensemble featuring Keane Sheppard-Fletcher, Matt Lee, Stephen Anderson, Abigail Dixon and Abu (as both The Seaman and The Iceberg – yes, really). 'Bringing Titanique to Sydney has been an unsinkable joy,' said producer Michael Cassel. 'We've laughed until we cried, Céline'd until our vocal cords gave out, and rode every comedic wave this show had to offer. The Sydney audience didn't just come aboard – they clung to the bow and screamed into the wind. I couldn't be prouder of the extraordinary cast and crew who kept the heart of the ocean beating strong.' Bringing a show like Titanique to Sydney was an unconventional choice for a major theatre producer like Michael Cassel (whose company is behind bringing hit musicals like & Juliet and Hamilton to Aussie shores). But goddamn, the success of this record-breaking season speaks for itself.
BBC News
30-04-2025
- Entertainment
- BBC News
Lauren Drew: 'Playing Celine Dion on stage is a lot of pressure'
When Lauren Drew was offered the role of Celine Dion in Titanique in London's West End, she did not have to think the Port Talbot-born musical star, a lifelong fan of the "queen of power ballads", it was a dream come described the Olivier Award-winning show as a parody of the 1997 film Titanic, which stars Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate said the role comes with "a lot of pressure," as she must deliver Dion's powerhouse vocals on the hit My Heart Will Go On. Drew began performing at a young age as a champion freestyle disco dancer, but it was during school that she discovered her passion for singing and trained at Neath Port Talbot College before earning a full scholarship to Mountview Academy of Theatre Arts in up in a working-class family with limited means, Drew said she worked tirelessly to fund her dreams, taking on various jobs from the age of said her family "kind of sacrificed everything for me, so I do this for them".Now 32, she said she believed there was something special about her hometown, which has produced stars like Sir Anthony Hopkins, Michael Sheen, and Richard Burton."I think the town naturally breeds very hardworking people," she added. Following acclaimed performances in Six the Musical and Legally Blonde, Drew has reached new heights of recognition in Titanique, with celebrity fans including Alan Carr and Amanda said audiences should expect a wildly different experience from the film it by Tye Blue, part of the team behind RuPaul's Drag Race, Drew said the show is "wacky, wonderful, and crazy" and "a real ride"."I need you to imagine a Titanic Museum, and Celine Dion crashes and she says, 'Oh, no, no, no'. This is not actually what what went down. I'll tell you what went down because I was there and this story is a fever dream," she added. The show also features Bad Education star Layton Williams, as the for Drew, a grounded performer playing an over-the-top diva, she said it was all about giving the audience a joyful added: "I feel like the world needs it right now. "You know, it's just kind of unapologetic, crazy joy. "And everybody, every single show, they're on their feet, every single time, without fail, it's just, it's so much fun," Drew said. In 2022, Celine Dion, widely known as the "queen of power ballads", revealed her battle with Stiff Person Syndrome, a rare autoimmune neurological disorder that causes severe muscle spasms. It affected her ability to sing and perform and led to her cancelling tour returned to live performance for the first time since revealing the condition at the Paris Olympics opening ceremony, where she sung on the Eiffel her health struggles are not mentioned in Titanique, which takes a more playful, spoof-like approach to her legacy. Although Lauren Drew's portrayal of the 200-million-record-selling Canadian star is an exaggerated version, audience expectations remain said: "There is such pressure, because people love her so much, she's such a kooky person, but first and foremost, I know that people want the vocals, so I am living like a nun at the moment."Determined to "make sure people get what they expect" from someone playing Celine Dion, Drew has been "guzzling down litres of water" and studying countless videos to capture the star's signature said: "I was such a massive fan of her anyway, and I've been told over the years that I remind people of her, so it wasn't too far a stretch."I kind of have that bonkers energy quite naturally anyway."But I've watched a lot of videos, things that she does when she's on stage, the flick of her hand and the pound of her chest, and she's very dynamic, in everything that she does, and everything is very deliberate," Drew hard work paid off for her as she was recently nominated for an Olivier Award for Best Actress in a said she hopes her success will show people "not to limit themselves because they came from nothing". You can listen to full interview on BBC Sounds
