A Titanic night of amateur theatre

I have to express an interest first.   To neutral reviewers of my blog - and you are all most welcome! - I am about to review a show performed by a company I have had the pleasure of MDing and performing with in the past, and featuring some performers I know very well indeed.   But I just wanted to share some thoughts on an excellent production, and also some musings on amateur theatre in general  

West Bromwich Operatic Society is an excellent amateur musical theatre company, and, ever the shrewd programmers, are this week staging Maury Yeston and Peter Stone's multi Tony winning show "Titanic" to coincide with the centenary of the tragedy.

"Titanic" presents many challenges to any company, amateur or professional, not least if the requirement for a huge cast with at least 10 major roles, and huge chorus numbers.   I had the privileged of conducting Ragtime the musical with WBOS nearly 10 years ago, so I know they are capable of tackling a show on this scale.

I am not going to single performers out from this excellent production - that would take 3 or 4 blog entries.  The main thing I was struck by this evening was the commitment of the performers on stage.  To tell a story of this emotional depth requires exceptional commitment from the performers and this group of performers delivered this commitment in spades. The cast ranged from bellboys aged 10 and up to senior company members well into their professional retirement. Every member put their heart and soul into this production, and it showed throughout the performances.

Several company members were required to play 2 or 3 different parts, and these were always differentiated with great clarity, not just with costume.

The chorus singing, such an integral part of this score, was excellent.  So much so I was confused by the MD (Jonathan Hill) wearing headphones into assuming some choral work had been clicked to support the live singing.  I was told after the show this was not the case - all vocals were live.  The sound was thrilling  (although the altos sometimes sounded a little thin - sorry - vocal nerd blogging here!) and really gave a sense of the excitement of the greatest ship ever build setting sale.

There were some delightful moments of characterization and direction  (Mike Capri and Steve Bracey), none more so than in "Doing the latest Rag" when the professional dance couple, having performed their own routine, proceed to teach the 1st and 2nd class passengers to Charleston and Cakewalk.   This was staged with great subtlety - the company didn't suddenly know how to do the dance but could be seen to be learning it, being a beat or 2 behind for some sections.  Add to this Mr Guggenheim not getting the steps and getting clearly frustrated and you have a lovingly staged scene with great elements of realism. This purveyed the story telling right up to the curtain call.

Quite uniquely the curtain call did not place any hierarchy on the performers or their characters.  All significant performers got their bow, but  the groupings were based purely on stage positions and not character significance. And the final group to receive their applause only had one principal performer in it.   Such a small but significant step to signify that, in a tragedy such as this, as Captain Smith himself says, it's every man for himself.

Also, possibly strangely, I would like to  give a big thumbs up to the programme - probably the best programme for any show - amateur or professional - I've seen in a long time.   Given that the show was being presented to coincide with the anniversary, the programme focussed on the real characters rather than the performers.  Where the performers bios would normally be we got the character name, performer name, and then a short bio of the real character.   No bios of the performers or production team was included - just names for credits.   Such a significant selfless gesture, given the anniversary, has to be applauded and celebrated.  Besides which much of the information was just plain fascinating!

Now it's time for the boring vocal nerd to offer a couple of criticisms.   Please bear in mind that nothing I am about to say actually spoilt my enjoyment of the performance, and given the same options in casting I would probably have made the same decisions as the current production team did.

However I thought I'd talk for a moment about vocal styles.  A couple of the male principals were, for me, vocally miscast.  These are performers I have seen in other more contemporary shows and know to be outstanding musical theatre performers, and indeed to a non vocal nerd, their performances this evening would have been in the good-to-excellent category.    My quibble is  simply that the voices, technically, were far to contemporary for the roles they were playing. Titanic does not use contemporary music to tell a period story, as Spring Awakening does.  Rather it uses traditional musical techniques from the period the show is set, and therefore the vocals should reflect that. I would love to work with the performers concerned to see if, if directed accordingly, they could adapt their natural contemporary vocal styles to a much more traditional technique more appropriate to the music.   My instinct is that they could, as they are undoubtedly terrific performers.   

Another principal performer, who possesses a wonderful lyric baritone voice, with a beautiful even tone from low A to high G, does not engage the body in his speaking voice, and therefore the speech, while always projected and full of character, lacks the same depth of tone of the singing voice.

Also why did the stoker have coal dust on his face, but pristine clean white trousers and shirt?!!

I shall expound upon the perils of casting in amateur theatre in a future blog entry.

It just remains for me to say  thank you to all at WBOS for another memorable night at the theatre, and a fitting and respectful tribute to those 1500 souls lost to the Atlantic 100 years ago.