Shipshape
Touring ‘Titanic' docks at Buell with new
spurt of creative energy
by Thom Wise
You’ve got to love a guy who can laugh at himself. Kevin Gray
is currently starring in the national tour of Titanic, opening Thursday
at the Buell Theatre. However, in Forbidden Broadway, the New York production
that satirized all of the show on the Great White Way, Titanic takes
a licking as does Gray for his work as the Phantom in Phantom of the
Opera. Luckily, he’s a big enough person to see the humor in it
all.
“I’m flattered if you want to know the truth,” the
star said during a recent telephone interview.
After leading roles in Phantom, The King and I, and Miss Saigon, Gray
said it’s a thrill to be in an ensemble production. In titanic,
he plays Thomas Andrews, the ship’s builder and the person who
first recognizes what dire straits the ship is in after hitting an iceberg
in the North Atlantic.
“As so many of us have, I’ve started a compulsive obsession
about the Titanic,” Gray said. “It’s such a compelling
piece of history, and every time it’s told we’re reminded
how fragile life is. It’s a collision between hope and nature,
how ordinary people act in extraordinary circumstance, and how in the
end it doesn’t matter how much money you have or how powerful you
are – everyone is equal in the end.
“Out of all the statistics that I’ve read about the sinking,
the one that still gets me the most is the fact that more first- class
men survived that all of the third-class women and children combined.”
As a piece of theater, the music to Titanic is what many people consider
its best asset. In 1997, the show won in each of the five Tony Award
categories it was nominated for, including Best Musical, Best Score and
Best Orchestration.
“You don’t get much better than Maury Yeston (who wrote
the music and lyrics to Titanic, as well as Nine and Grand Hotel) – he’s
so compelling. And most people don’t understand how important an
orchestrator’s work is, but Johnathn Tunick is just about the best
in the business,” Gray said.
“If you’ve seen the show in New York, you immediately see
that it has a very different style. It’s not a carbon copy. That’s
the nice thing about doing a tour – the designers learn things
about what works and what doesn’t. It’s a new cast obviously
and we don’t do what they did on Broadway. It gave the creators
a new spurt of energy.
“(Specifically,) it’s more abstract, more of an open set
and a very different style. You still see the three sections (of first,
tourist and steerage classes), and the entire set tilts. It’s more
expansive and shows more of the grandeur and how massive the Titanic
was. Don’t forget that this ship was three city blocks long and
people had to jump from the height of an 11-story building – at
2:30 in the morning!”
“Arrogance” is the word Gray uses to describe the chief
cause of the accident. “They all thought that they had conquered
technology. We’re still dealing with the same issues; but today
it’s Y2K, viruses, and cloning. We’re literally I the same
boat. I know that response has been mixed, but that’s good. We’re
telling a story and of course people are going to react differently.
But I also think that on our best performances, people are dumbstruck.”
When asked why local heroine Molly Brown wasn’t written into this
version of Titanic, Gray laughed again.
“I don’t know thy,” he said. “I think she was
in my favorite movie (about the Titanic), A Night To Remember. I guess
there were just too many stories to tell. But the ship is really the
star.”