It’s been over 109 years since the ship named for a doomed race of Greek gods sank, but almost everybody still has a “Titanic” reference, even if it’s only of a fictional character screaming “I’m the king of the world” from the bow of a giant ship.
Court Theatre’s pre-filmed, streamed staging of Owen McCafferty’s “Titanic (Scenes from the British Wreck Commissioner’s Inquiry, 1912)” shows the human tragedies that unfolded in harrowing, gruesome detail after the real-life Titanic hit the iceberg that sent more than 1,500 souls down to the lightless depths two miles beneath the North Atlantic.
Directed for Court by Vanessa Stalling, McCafferty’s script is as its matter-of-fact as its title infers: For roughly two hours, we hear testimony from survivors and maritime experts about the lethal maritime collision that occurred at 11:40 p.m., Sunday, April 14, 1912. Lookouts, stewards, bakers, noblemen and engineers tell their stories, each ferreted out as the Commissioner (Alys Shante Dickerson, a regal, authoritative presence) tries to find out why the American-owned ship too big to sink sank.
HMS Media has filmed the production on Court’s stage, where Arnel Sancianco’s minimalist set has the actors seated in separate booths, speaking to each other via headphones, often referring to thick binders in front of them. The staging is static enough to be a drawback and the double (sometimes triple) casting of witnesses and commission members isn’t ideal. The actors are literally isolated from each other, which makes the production feel like a series of monologue. Moreover, there’s a disconnect between the staidness of the Commission proceedings and the devastation of the testimonies.
But Stalling finds the power in McCafferty’s dispassionate, frill-free language. Listen to nightmarish recollections of an ocean teeming with bodies and filled with the combined wails of “hundreds of hundreds” drowning and you won’t soon forget it.
Ditto the stats recited as an epilogue of sorts. Of the Titanic’s 325 first class passengers, 203 survived. Of the 706 people packed into third class, below-the-water-line steerage compartments, 178 survived.
“Titanic” emphasizes the advantages of wealth with harrowing specificity: What lifeboats there were (and famously, there were not enough) were accessible only from the promenade deck, where third-class passengers weren’t allowed. While the upper-deck passengers were getting into the lifeboats, the third-class passengers were being told to stay where they were and keep quiet.
Keith Parham’s lighting design helps focus the production, witnesses and their examiners framed in pools of light that bleed into darkness as they exit, their words seeming to hang in the air.
Mikhail Fiksel’s sound design and score augments the drama greatly, a six-person (off-stage) orchestra providing an underscore of that heightens the tension. Between scenes, the words of the dead take the form of an audio collage crafted from the final telegrams to loved ones, increasingly urgent cables and, ultimately, the screams of the dying.
The production is static, but the images the cast conjures are vivid: The ship’s electric lights were burning right up until they were submerged. Crew literally threw passengers from the upper decks into the lifeboats below. Chief baker Charles Joughin (Andy Nagraj) pitched deck chairs overboard, hoping that he’d find one to cling to after entering the water. Ship’s lookout Reginald Lee (Nate Burger) describes the near-invisibility of a iceberg that had capsized, its white tip submerged, its massive, black-glass underbelly impossible to see in the haze of a moonless night.
Highlights include Sir Cosmo Duff Gordon, a snooty weasel conjured by Bri Sudia, who also plays Sir Cosmo’s dainty but wildly entitled Lady Cosmo Duff Gordon. Ronald L. Conner seethes with frustrated rage as W.D. Harbinson, representative of the third class passengers. And as famed polar explorer Ernest Shackleton, Xavier Edward King speaks with chilling awe as he describes the rarity of an iceberg like the one described by “Titanic” survivors.
By 2030, its’ estimated the last vestiges of the Titanic will have vanished, its heated swimming pool, five grand pianos, Turkish bath and nine hundred tons of baggage devoured by the sea. “Titanic (Scenes from the British Wreck Commissioner’s Inquiry, 1912)” will ensure you don’t soon forget the stories of the people who went down with the ship.