Titanic the Musical
Music & Lyrics by Maury Yeston
Book by Peter Stone
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Opened on Broadway on April 23, 1997 at Lunt-Fontanne Theatre
Directed by Richard Jones
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Won Tony Award for Best Musical that year
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​The musical was notably produced in 2014 as a reunion staged concert with most of the original cast for Lincoln Center and another production took place in 2024 for Encores! at New York City Center
The Broadway production had a disastrous preview on March 29, 1997
“The production repeatedly ground to a halt because of bugs in its tilting, three-story hydraulic-lift set. The audience finally left after a grueling 3 1/2 hours — an hour longer than the mighty ship took to sink in real life.”
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Critic reviews - the show seemed to be designed so that the ship is the star, rather than characters.
Titanic Without $10 Million Sets Is Just as Effective, Says Maury Yeston | Playbill
“But there was even more offstage irony afoot when Titanic made its Broadway premiere in 1997. Yeston’s notion of the technological hubris present in the building of the doomed ship came to haunt the massive original production, too. At a reported cost of $10 million, that show featured a hydraulic set (designed by Stewart Laing, who won a Tony Award for his work) so complex that a pre-Broadway tryout proved impossible and Broadway previews became notorious for frequent technical problems… Titanic closed as one of the most expensive failures Broadway had yet seen—though producers told The New York Times that they had recouped more than half of the initial investment.”