Amateur Dramatics

For an amateur company, IODS certainly set themselves a titanic task recreating what was the world's largest boat and transporting us back to 1912. However, the cast of around 50 did a fantastic job of recreating a sense of being on a huge boat.

The musical has nothing to do with the Winslet/DiCaprio Hollywood blockbuster, although both were launched around the same time with The Musical getting its Broadway debut in 1997. The music and lyrics are by Maury Yeston and the story's by Peter Stone. Curiously it's never been on in London's West End.

The owner, Captain and designer

For me the story starts a bit slowly as we're introduced to a whole range of passengers. The only ones who appear interesting at the start are the three Irish Kates (played by Lucy Taylor, Ruth Mortimer and Katy Pointer) in third class and social climber Alice Beane (Stephanie Brown) and her long-suffering husband in second class. Comedy is also provided by Tony Gomez as Third Officer Herbert Pitman who drones on about his colonial exploits in the vein of Only Fools & Horses' Uncle Albert or Corporal Jones from Dad's Army.

The narrative focuses on the rigid class order which comes down to money rather than British-style breeding - all the first class passengers are American millionaires.

The other main theme of the tale is who is to blame for hitting the iceberg - the owner Ismay (played with suitable pomposity by Frank Cannon lookalike Peter Page) who pushes for high speeds, Captain Smith who won't stand up to him and changes to a more northerly course to save time or the designer who realises the water could have been contained on board with a few alterations to his original plans.

Mr and Mrs Straus

As the story progresses I started to care a lot more about who would get the limited places in a lifeboat and who would get the blame. However, for me the musical doesn't have a really big memorable number such as an "America" or "Oh! What A Beautiful Morning." Highlights were the Strausses duet "Still" (Norman Rutterford and Angela Rankin) and "Barrett's Song" sung by the stoker (Jonathon Mudd).

Some of the lyrics seemed a bit 'technical' (eg "122,000 pounds of meat, poultry and fish, Titanic! 40 tons of potatoes, 1100 pounds of marmalade, 37,000 bottles of wine, beer and spirits, Titanic!") and they might have been better as dialogue - but that's a criticism of the musical itself, not the production.

Some of the lighting cues were a bit awry and microphones crackled a bit and occasionally didn't seem to be at full volume for some of the singers' lines, but I'm sure these were opening night glitches. The set was impressive and conveyed the scale of the vessel. It was complemented by the use of archive photographs which were projected onto the backdrop.

It's also a good history lesson with all the characters being based on actual passengers and a reminder that the sinking could have been avoided by sticking to a more southerly course and paying more heed to the iceberg warnings from the recently invented wireless.

An impressive night out particularly when you remind yourself that everyone's doing it for free and for the love of it.