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Trisolini and the cast of the Titanic are sailing for success - full steam ahead at the Players!
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So I'm sitting in Row J of the Players next to my wife Maria, who after two minutes is a quivering mass of proud mother telling the whole row - and anyone else who will listen - that her son's in the cast. And all over the theatre, fathers and mothers and sons and daughters and girlfriends and boyfriends and Facebook and MySpace friends are doing the same thing. Namely, with a cast of 48 and a crew of 25, the Kevin Bacon rule of probability suggests that every audience member in the packed theatre is somehow related to one of them. Everyone's nervous and excited: they're all waiting impatiently for Artistic Director Jeffery Kin to finish the announcements and herald in the overture of "Titanic - The Musical".
The lights dim - somewhere back in Row Q, director Bob Trisolini takes a seat next to his partner Bob Nosal, mentally genuflects and watches tensely as the cast he has come to love so dearly over the last five weeks slowly fills the spacious Players stage and surrounds the huge gangway. It takes a good seventeen minutes before all the cast members are on stage, and their voices climax to fill the auditorium. It's April 10, 1912, and the RMS Titanic sails smoothly out of Southampton. Next stop New York …
The whole time I'm wondering how it's possible to generate emotion and intimacy with so many actors and such big sets? How do you motivate an audience? One thing going in: if you're expecting Leo, Kate or Céline, go rent the movie. Apart from the inevitable ending, the stage musical has hardly any similarity with it. It delves into a different life on-board and gives us a far truer insight into a trans-Atlantic cruise at the turn of the 20th century. Because although we all know the story of the Titanic, Trisolini presents us with spotlit vignettes that allow us to become familiar with individual families and share their fate. And in the end, it doesn't matter whether you're a 1st, 2nd or 3rd Class passenger, rich or poor, famous or unknown: if you weren't one of the lucky few who got into a lifeboat ... well, you know the rest. We laugh and cry with them, we shake our heads at the shipping magnate, captain and designer heaving blame on each other, and after two hours we have a lump in our stomachs and shed a tear when the inevitable happens.
I adore this cast. Really, I do. I know them all and have worked with most of them. Like every community-theatre cast, they have turned their lives upside down to be on-stage now. Hundreds of hours of walking the same walk and singing the same song to enthrall us from now until the end of March.
So tonight it's all about the cast. "Titanic" is an ensemble piece, and although I can single out soloists like Chris Caswell, Brian Rudolph, Sue Cole, Mark Shoemaker, Steve Dragon, Greg Teague, Kathryn Ohrenstein, Kelly Leissler and Rafael Petlock, I'd be doing the rest of this wonderful team an injustice if I didn't engrave their names on the iceberg: Joe Hunter, Leslie Allen, Steven Bikfalvy, Bonnie Schiavone, Jack Eddleman, Jeanne Larrañaga, Peter Apolos, Dom Baldino, Sharon Bartley, Shelley Whiteside, Joe Waldron, John Vanis, Thomas Turner, Erica Brown, Jeffrey Carlson, Michael Brown, Donna Culbreth, Teri Duncan, Lake Edwards, Ryan Kimball Fitts, Libby Fleming, Joanna Griesé, Loryn Haber, William Horton, Samantha Johnson, Anthony Lombard, Barry Look, Julie Look, Mark Mercado, Audrey Ellen Minch, Rod Rawlings, Carson Rudolph, Sharon Rudolph, Tamara Solum, Lilianna Solum, Michael Solum, Douglas Stewart, Victoria Tokarz, Cheryl Johnson.
Stage Managers are Patty Abate and Tony Becich, Kaylene McCaw is the costume designer, Suzinn Edelston & Susan Raetz did props, Joe Oshry the lighting designer, John C. Reynolds the scenic artist and Michael Newton-Brown the scenic designer. Music Director is Todd Lindamood.
I hope you go and see this production. The original Broadway show won five 1997 Tony Awards, including Best Musical, and this Players production upholds its success. It's an intricate but very melodious musical score, and the show, written by Peter Stone ("1776," "Will Rogers Follies") and composer/lyricist Maury Yeston ("Grand Hotel", "Nine"), is extremely interesting to watch, something I can't say about a lot of the shows I see.
And if you're like me, you'll want this cast to live on, and that iceberg to stay well away.
"Titanic - The Musical" runs thru March 29 at the Players Theatre, 838 N. Tamiami Trail, Sarasota 34236. Box Office: 941 365-2494, or online at www.theplayers.org.
The lights dim - somewhere back in Row Q, director Bob Trisolini takes a seat next to his partner Bob Nosal, mentally genuflects and watches tensely as the cast he has come to love so dearly over the last five weeks slowly fills the spacious Players stage and surrounds the huge gangway. It takes a good seventeen minutes before all the cast members are on stage, and their voices climax to fill the auditorium. It's April 10, 1912, and the RMS Titanic sails smoothly out of Southampton. Next stop New York …
The whole time I'm wondering how it's possible to generate emotion and intimacy with so many actors and such big sets? How do you motivate an audience? One thing going in: if you're expecting Leo, Kate or Céline, go rent the movie. Apart from the inevitable ending, the stage musical has hardly any similarity with it. It delves into a different life on-board and gives us a far truer insight into a trans-Atlantic cruise at the turn of the 20th century. Because although we all know the story of the Titanic, Trisolini presents us with spotlit vignettes that allow us to become familiar with individual families and share their fate. And in the end, it doesn't matter whether you're a 1st, 2nd or 3rd Class passenger, rich or poor, famous or unknown: if you weren't one of the lucky few who got into a lifeboat ... well, you know the rest. We laugh and cry with them, we shake our heads at the shipping magnate, captain and designer heaving blame on each other, and after two hours we have a lump in our stomachs and shed a tear when the inevitable happens.
I adore this cast. Really, I do. I know them all and have worked with most of them. Like every community-theatre cast, they have turned their lives upside down to be on-stage now. Hundreds of hours of walking the same walk and singing the same song to enthrall us from now until the end of March.
So tonight it's all about the cast. "Titanic" is an ensemble piece, and although I can single out soloists like Chris Caswell, Brian Rudolph, Sue Cole, Mark Shoemaker, Steve Dragon, Greg Teague, Kathryn Ohrenstein, Kelly Leissler and Rafael Petlock, I'd be doing the rest of this wonderful team an injustice if I didn't engrave their names on the iceberg: Joe Hunter, Leslie Allen, Steven Bikfalvy, Bonnie Schiavone, Jack Eddleman, Jeanne Larrañaga, Peter Apolos, Dom Baldino, Sharon Bartley, Shelley Whiteside, Joe Waldron, John Vanis, Thomas Turner, Erica Brown, Jeffrey Carlson, Michael Brown, Donna Culbreth, Teri Duncan, Lake Edwards, Ryan Kimball Fitts, Libby Fleming, Joanna Griesé, Loryn Haber, William Horton, Samantha Johnson, Anthony Lombard, Barry Look, Julie Look, Mark Mercado, Audrey Ellen Minch, Rod Rawlings, Carson Rudolph, Sharon Rudolph, Tamara Solum, Lilianna Solum, Michael Solum, Douglas Stewart, Victoria Tokarz, Cheryl Johnson.
Stage Managers are Patty Abate and Tony Becich, Kaylene McCaw is the costume designer, Suzinn Edelston & Susan Raetz did props, Joe Oshry the lighting designer, John C. Reynolds the scenic artist and Michael Newton-Brown the scenic designer. Music Director is Todd Lindamood.
I hope you go and see this production. The original Broadway show won five 1997 Tony Awards, including Best Musical, and this Players production upholds its success. It's an intricate but very melodious musical score, and the show, written by Peter Stone ("1776," "Will Rogers Follies") and composer/lyricist Maury Yeston ("Grand Hotel", "Nine"), is extremely interesting to watch, something I can't say about a lot of the shows I see.
And if you're like me, you'll want this cast to live on, and that iceberg to stay well away.
"Titanic - The Musical" runs thru March 29 at the Players Theatre, 838 N. Tamiami Trail, Sarasota 34236. Box Office: 941 365-2494, or online at www.theplayers.org.
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