I wonder what Millvina would make of Titanic musical tribute
I’m a little bit perplexed today by a musical arriving in Belfast from Southampton next April. You’ll wonder why I’m making a fuss about the performance’s last port of call before it docks at the Grand Opera House. Perhaps you’ll understand my concern when I point out that it’s Titanic the Musical that I’m talking about. This award-winning show opens at the Mayflower Theatre in Southampton, the week before it opens at the Grand Opera House.
It will not have escaped your notice that it was from Southampton that the Harland & Wolffbuilt liner sailed out on her tragic maiden voyage in April 1912.
Titanic the Musical, which I’m assured is being tastefully presented, will be a sure-fire success in Belfast.
I suppose turning the tragedy into a stage performance was inevitable. The curious will turn up in the stalls, along with folk who, after all these years, perhaps had dead relatives who were victims, or remember the H&W craftsmen who built her.
The original version on Broadway won Tony Awards and I’m assured this new version, with music and lyrics by Maury Yeston, sets a high standard. But I have to wonder how the late Millvina Dean (below) would have reacted to a musical about the sinking of the Titanic, of which — at just nine weeks old — she was the youngest survivor.
Millvina’s mum and brother survived too, but her father perished after he lowered her to a raft, wrapped in a sack.
She told me she never watched the movie Titanic and, for years, she refused to give interviews.
I’ll never forget my chat with Millvina, who was 97 when she died in May 2009 after a career as a civil servant. Will I go to see Titanic the Musical? Probably, although this year alone I’ve had to take a couple of columnists in national newspapers to task for tasteless jokes about the tragedy.
One of my most memorable experiences was being aboard the Queen Mary II on a voyage to New York and sailing close to where the Titanic went down in the Atlantic.
Along with other passengers, I stood at the ship’s rail in silence. There was nothing to say, the ocean was calm that day and there wasn’t an iceberg in sight.
Sometimes, I ask myself if it wouldn’t have been better if that wreck, which was really a burial site, had been left in peace.