About a decade ago, three friends — Marla Mindelle, Constantine Rousouli and Tye Blue — living in Los Angeles found success with comedy concert shows that transformed iconic movies into something lovingly irreverent.
“These were scrappy, silly shows that we staged at a local dinner theater,” Blue says. “We took movies and raked them over the coals and had fun inserting pop songs and comedy bits into them.”
The trio took on pop culture icons such as “The Devil Wears Prada,” “The Big Lebowski,” “Hocus Pocus” and “Mean Girls” but hit a roadblock with Rousouli’s idea of taking James Cameron’s blockbuster “Titanic,” filling it with Celine Dion songs, and having an iteration of the singer star as a sort of host.
“I thought it was a brilliant idea, but the theater wasn’t interested,” Blue, 45, says, with a laugh. “I couldn’t stop thinking about it. So I decided to produce it myself.”
The result of that effort is “Titanique,” a scrappy, off-Broadway musical comedy parody of the blockbuster film “Titanic,” co-written by Mindelle, Rousouli and Blue, who also directs. A long-running hit in New York, it’s making its Chicago debut in a co-production of Porchlight Music Theatre and Broadway in Chicago.
The premise of “Titanique” is finding out what really happened to Jack and Rose on that fateful night. It begins when Dion hijacks a Titanic Museum tour and gives her wild take on the movie’s love story.
“There’s enough of the movie plot there that you’re nostalgia factor gets satiated,” Blue says. “Celine takes it on a deeply unhinged fever dream scenario that is very fun and jam-packed with a lot of joy, a lot of queer references, a lot of pop culture references. There’s a little something for everyone.”
It’s all driven by selections from Dion’s vast catalog, including more than 15 songs (“My Heart Will Go On,” “All By Myself,” “To Love You More”) plus some mashups and medley moments.
Blue credits songwriter David Foster, who has collaborated with Dion and loved the show in Los Angeles. He and his team helped clear the songs with songwriters and publishers so they could be used in the musical.
Choosing the songs was easy, according to Blue.
“Her songs just lent themselves to theatricality, so the catalog was full of options. We figured the songs out pretty quickly and only had a couple of roadblocks and made some substitutions. She has so many great songs that is was easy to make it work.”
The cast — which features all Chicago actors — is led by Clare Kennedy McLaughlin as Celine Dion, Adam Fane as Jack and Maya Rowe as Rose.
“I was blown away by Clare’s superstar voice, and obviously that is something you look for in this role,” Blue says. “But she’s also so quirky and so off-the-cuff kooky that she naturally inhabits a lot of Celine’s traits.”
Dion is the queen of power ballads, and McLaughlin, 26, says she also is partial to the demanding tunes.
“I’m also just obsessed with how uniquely herself Celine Dion is on stage,” McLaughlin says. “Our show isn’t a parody of Celine but more of a celebration of her. Trying to capture that has been a really fun and challenging experience.”
Over the past eight years, in addition to working in Chicago and New York, Blue has directed productions in Sydney, Australia, Montreal and London and will soon head to Paris to begin work on another.
McLaughlin says Blue is “the grounding force that brings us back to that very grassroots nature of the show. He’s the anchor at the heart of all the shows.”
Saying he’s looking forward to moving on to new projects, Blue jokes, “I tell people I feel like I’m trapped in a mockumentary about the making of ‘Titanique.’ “
Later in the summer, he’ll direct a new play, “Joan,” about Joan Rivers, at Cape Cod’s Cape Playhouse, as well as work on a new Off-Broadway musical and other writing projects.
Blue hopes anyone looking for a little break from the real world will find it in “Titanique.”
“Listen, we are all carrying a lot of tension and anxiety. We’ve got political stress, we’ve got financial stress, we’ve got social stress. I think what this show has proven to me and has emboldened my mission with it is that people need escape, and they need to go places where they feel safe and let down their guard a little bit.”