Camp can be a “treacherous element”, said Clive Davis in The Times. Too often, it’s just “tired nudges and winks coated in a sheen of all-purpose irony”. And for the first ten minutes of this “demented jukebox musical” – a spoof retelling of “Titanic” that raids the back catalogue of the Canadian singer Celine Dion – I felt sure we were heading into this blind alley. “Everybody loves seamen!” shouted one character, prompting me to sink further into my seat. But then, remarkably, I was won over as the action gathered tempo and the jokes came thick and fast, like “‘Airplane!’ with a musical theatre twist”.
You might think this “outrageous production” (already a hit off-Broadway) is mainly for “Celine nuts, ‘Titanic’ boffins, hen nights and drag parties”, said Patrick Marmion in the Daily Mail. “But if you ask me, it has the mass appeal to run for months, even years. Titaníque? C’est fantastique!”
I’m not sure that this “meta-theatrical romp” is “quite as clever or hilarious as it sets out to be”, but it’s performed with such skill and energy that “it is impossible not to have a good time”, said Sarah Crompton on What’s on Stage.
Lauren Drew is hilarious as Dion, who is here a passenger on the doomed liner and the show’s narrator, said Nick Curtis in The London Standard. Bedecked in sequins, she delivers expert pastiches of “the singer’s lung-busting stylings and yodelling arpeggios”, laced with “glutinously-accented asides”. Meanwhile, Layton Williams channels Tina Turner as the silver-clad “Iceberg Bitch”, who is determined to sink the ship.
Tye Blue’s “frothy” production “has a fantastically brash, devil-may-care spirit and sparkling performances”, said Arifa Akbar in The Guardian. However, the central joke does start to feel “overstretched”.
And there are moments when you don’t feel entirely comfortable laughing along, given the scale of the Titanic tragedy, said Dominic Cavendish in The Daily Telegraph. Still, on its own terms – “guying epic cinema with a shoestring theatricality” – this entertainment is “hard to fault”.
Criterion Theatre, London W1. Until 30 March