The tour of the Maury Yeston/Peter Stone musical Titanic

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Word has it that the first preview performance of the 1997 Maury Yeston/ Peter Stone musical Titanic was almost as big a disaster as the shipwreck the show describes. Costumes weren't ready until the last minute, tech was still rough, and the book needed work. Many rewrites later it opened officially to tepid reviews but enthusiastic audiences, went on to win multiple Tony awards, and celebrated its second anniversary on Broadway this past April.

A slightly re-staged version of Titanic (it's one set lighter than the Broadway original) has dropped anchor at the Fox through September 5th, and while its book never quite manages to weave together its disparate story threads, there are enough wonderful moments and fine performances here to make the trip to Grand Center well worthwhile.

To begin with, Yeston has given us a dramatic and intelligent score, including a fifteen-minute opening number of near-operatic dimensions. It begins with the ship's designer Thomas Andrews (played with great conviction by Kevin Gray) singing in hushed tones of his plans for "a floating city...At once a poem and the perfection of physical engineering". The curtains part and, on a stage dominated by the boarding ramp, the passengers and crew are introduced to us as they marvel at and then board the giant ship that only they can see. The scene closes with the triumphal "Godspeed Titanic", sung by the entire company. Exposition should always be this good!

Just as striking, but on a smaller scale, are scenes like the one between Idisor Straus - the owner of Macy's - and Ida, his wife of forty years. Refusing to be parted from her husband, she was the only first-class female passenger to die on the Titanic. Their song "Still" is beautifully performed by S. Marc Jordan and former film star Taina Elg. And then there's the number "Lady's Maid" - in which the third-class passengers sing of their hopes for a better life in America where "you can rise above your class". It's both stirring and tragic since we know that none of those dreams will come true. On the Titanic survival was directly linked to the cost of your ticket.

I've singled out a few members of this uniformly fine cast. The tyranny of the clock makes it impossible to mention everyone, but here are a few more that spring to mind: John Leone as the shy radio man Harold Bride, rhapsodizing over the "dit-dit-dah-dit-dah-dit" of the Victorian Internet; William Parry as the doomed Captain E. J. Smith, who should have had a bit more faith in Mr. Bride's wireless; and Liz Conahay as the celebrity-obsessed Alice Beane, crashing a first-class dance party to "rub elbows" with American royalty - much to the consternation of the first-class steward Henry Etches, played with dry wit by Edward Conrey.

It doesn't all hold together and the obligatory triumphal ending doesn't quite ring true, but on balance Titanic has enough drama, romance, and comedy for an entertaining evening of musical theatre.