Titanic
They said it couldn't be done. They said you couldn't have a Broadway musical about the Titanic. The very notion is laughable. You couldn't have people on a stage singing and dancing about a tragedy. And you especially couldn't have one where every single person in the audience knows the ending as they take their seats. But Peter Stone, who wrote the story and the book, and Maury Yeston, who composed the score and wrote the lyrics, pressed on. They had a much higher opinion of the musical-going public than the experts did. But then one complication followed another, expenses for the lavish production grew and grew -- so much so that Stone and Yeston and their producers knew they couldn't afford to have the usual out-of-town tryouts. They'd have to open cold before a first-night Broadway audience, with all the naysayers sharpening their pencils to a needle point right out front. And then in April 1997, almost exactly 85 years after the Titanic touched bottom in the North Atlantic, Titanic the musical set sail at the Lunt-Fontanne theatre for its maiden voyage. And it didn't sink. It soared. Audiences loved it. Even the expert naysayers had to backtrack. It was, all agreed, a glorious, ground-breaking Broadway musical. It was in the grand tradition of those other "daring" musicals which in the years since the Titanic's sinking had transformed the American musical from a tawdry girlie show with Tin Pan Alley ditties into a major American art form -- Jerome Kern's Show Boat, Rodgers and Hammerstein's Oklahoma! (also "sure" to tank), Bernstein's West Side Story (one of the first musical tragedies). Stone and Yeston's Titanic had now carried that noble tradition even farther, into the next century. Finally, at the Tony awards, the crowning was completed -- Titanic swept the board, winning an astonishing five statuettes. In an odd way, Titanic the Musical reversed the fortunes of Titanic the Ocean Liner. The latter was given every chance for success, and failed. The former was proclaimed dead in the water before it opened, but became a smash hit. Here now, lavishly illustrated with over a hundred color photos of the glorious, thrilling production, are the multi-award-winning book and lyrics of Titanic. One of the lyrics in the show goes, "How Did They Build Titanic?" The same question -- with the same note of astonishment -- could be asked of the musical's incredible birthing. Titanic -- the Complete Book of the Musical also provides Peter Stone and Maury Yeston's accounts of just how they went about building their "dream ship": including the backstage dramas of how they came up with the idea (all but simultaneously), how they talked and cajoled producers into backing it, how they overcame the monumental, highly technical, and probably unprecedented production difficulties. Most especially, author and composer each explains why this story, this tragic tale for the ages, meant so much to him personally; and why both felt compelled to share it, in words and song, with the world at this moment in time. Because Titanic the musical is more than a wonderful Broadway show, more than an award-winning stage extravaganza -- it's a living, ongoing, and moving memorial to the over one thousand brave souls who perished in the freezing North Atlantic that fateful spring morning in 1912. It's also a reminder to us, at the opposite end of the 20th century, not to be in too much of a hurry, not to over-depend on our technological marvels. The most poignant moment of the Titanic's sinking, the one people recall first, and remember most, is the story of the ship's band playing on to the very end in a heroic effort to keep up the spirits of all those about to perish so horribly. Stone and Yeston have, in their own words and songs, re-struck up that noble band in such a masterful way that Titanic's beautiful, heroic strains will never be silenced again, will go on lifting all our spirits, in good times and bad, for the foreseeable future. Because a great musical like Titanic does more than lighten our life; becomes a part of it. Godspeed Titanic! - Jacket flap. A full-color gallery with over 150 photos of the original Broadway production; color costume and set designs and sketches; the complete back-story of the production from concept to launch to hit musical; artists at the helm: the crossing from fact to fiction; a brief history of Titanic lore; poster and marketing art; and the complete book and lyrics. - Publisher.
