Enter the auditorium in Streeterville’s Broadway Playhouse At Water Tower Place, and you’ll find a sparkling jewel the size of several human heads dangling before the curtain. It is a Party City-esque rendition of the Heart of the Ocean, the fabled gem that went overboard in the final scenes of the 1997 blockbuster, “Titanic,” the strains of Celine Dion’s “My Heart Will Go On” swelling in the background.
Welcome to “Titanique.” Word to the wise: There is a “Titanic” musical, this is not that. The Porchlight Theater/Broadway in Chicago collaboration is an audacious, ridiculous, profane, puerile, high camp, low-brow, thoroughly entertaining musical parody of the movie, featuring the songs of Dion.
Created by Marla Mindelle, Constantine Rousouli and Tye Blue (who also directs), “Titanique” is positively goofy, wherein foolishness knows no bounds.
There is a “two-second intermission” featuring the titular refrain of “Who Let the Dogs Out.” The infamous iceberg that sank the Titanic (113 years ago on April 12) arrives in Tina Turner drag. An eggplant microphone is featured in a love song. There is a giant, talking Patti LuPone head. The travelers on the Titanic all survive, saved through the magic of Celine Dion. As it turns out, she was on the ship, too. Just go with it.
We begin in the “Titanic Museum” with a docent pointing out the captain’s monocle. (“He had really bad eyesight”). Soon we are swept onto the ship itself, ushered in by Dion (a dazzling Clare Kennedy McLaughlin) and a powerhouse rendition of “I’m Alive.”
As in the movie, scrappy Jack (Adam Fane) and romantic Rose (Maya Rowe) meet on the deck, pretend they’re flying on the edge of the bow, dance an Irish jig in steerage, engage in some naked figure drawing, and fall in love before the ship goes down. Rose’s preening fiance Cal (Adrian Aguilar) and her mother Ruth (Rob Lindley) do not approve, but Molly Brown (Abby C. Smith) encourages Rose to follow her heart, and so she does. Well, almost. Rose eventually leaves Jack to drown as she bobs away to safety on a floating door that is definitely big enough for Jack, too.
“Titanique” swims along on waves of music from the Dion catalogue. McLaughlin is featured throughout, radiating charisma and doing justice to the epic drama of Dion’s songs, “My Heart Will Go On” prominent among them.
When Eric Lewis (filling in for Lorenzo Shawn Parnell opening night) shows up as the Iceberg as Tina Turner, he sends a vaulting rendition of “River Deep, Mountain High” “River Deep Mountain High” into the stratosphere. It’s glorious, even if it’s impossible to figure out what Tina Turner has to do with icebergs.
Rose’s mother Ruth labels Jack “an aging twink,” (ouch) but make no mistake: Fane is fully working into his leading man era. With “You and I,“ he delivers enough money notes to fill the Mariana Trench. Fane’s got comedy down as well, tossing his hair like Cher, fumbling with a pair of fuzzy, pink handcuffs and clambering frantically in a futile attempt to hang on to that damn door.
As Rose, Rowe finds the balance between silliness and sincerity, making the most of iconic lines (“draw me like one of your French girls.”) as well as iconic music. With “If You Asked Me To,” Rowe proves herself a powerhouse. With “The Prayer,” she confirms it.
One the best musical moments comes from Smith’s Molly Brown. Her delivery of “All By Myself” has the force of a hurricane-induced waterspout.
Throughout, “Titanique” references much from pop culture. A riff from the “The White Lotus” theme bubbles up. There are references to “Wicked.” There’s a shout out to 1972’s best song, “The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia.” There’s a hilarious homage to “RuPau’s Drag Race” Season 9-winner Sasha Velour’s infamous rose petal reveal, as well as the one-word catchphrase spawned by drag queen Alyssa Edwards (“Drag Race” Season 9, “RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars” Season 5). In fact, “Drag Race” gets its own parody-within-the-parody, as the Iceberg announces it’s time to “lip sync for your lifeboat.”
Jeffrey D. Kmiec’s set is dominated by a massive staircase that evokes the grandeur and luxury of the Titanic, except it lights up like a “Dance Dance Revolution” game once Victor Garber (Jackson Evans, playing the actor who played the captain in 1997’s “Titanic.”) starts strutting through “I Drove All Night.”
Backed by a four-person band conducted by Dr. Michael McBride, “Titanique” sounds fantastic from curtain up to curtain call.
If you’re in need of a laugh — and who doesn’t these days? — “Titanique” will suck you in with its ridiculousness, and send you out in a sea of snort-chortles.