One of the more unlikely success stories on Broadway this season is heading into the Tony Awards with real momentum. ABC7 New York reported that Titanique, a comedy that reimagines the story of the Titanic with Celine Dion at its centre, has earned four Tony nominations and is being celebrated ahead of this weekend's ceremony, capping a long and improbable journey for its creators.
The premise is exactly as offbeat as it sounds. The show asks what if Celine Dion was actually on the ship, folding her music through the familiar tale of the 1997 blockbuster and its most iconic song. The result is a parody that has audiences cracking up and critics raving, blending two pop-culture touchstones into a single stage spectacle.
Titanique is the brainchild of two best friends, Marla Mendel and Constantine Rassouli, who also star as Celine and Jack. As they tell it, the idea was born, as great things sometimes are, drunk in a bar, with the pair summing up their road to this moment in a simple refrain: three bucks, two bags, one dream.
Getting here took roughly ten years. Both had worked on Broadway before and then given up on those dreams, heading to Los Angeles, where he aimed to be an actor and she a Hollywood writer. After losing everything, they reconnected working in dinner theater in L.A., doing movie-to-musical parodies, when Rassouli floated the idea of doing Titanic with all Celine Dion songs and told Mendel she would play Celine while he took on Jack.
They sat on the concept for two years before finally putting pen to paper, staging shows in Los Angeles for fun and then bringing the production to New York on a whim. It began Off Off Broadway in the basement of a restaurant in the city, with homemade props, including a heart of the ocean pieced together with a hot glue gun and supplies from a craft store.
At the heart of the show is Mendel's portrayal of Celine Dion, which she describes as a love letter to the singer. She said she studied the star's distinct language, the way she looks at a camera, finds people in a crowd and talks, working to capture the mannerisms that make the impression land for audiences who know the icon well.
Part of the draw, the creators say, is that no two performances are quite alike, thanks to the improvisation woven through the show, meaning audiences will never see the same version twice. With four Tony nominations now in hand and the awards just ahead this weekend, the pair are being wished well as a wild idea from a bar finally takes its place on Broadway's biggest night.