The cast of 'Titanique' set sail to the West End

All aboard! Titanique cast members Rob Houchen, Jordan Luke Gage, and Lauren Drew, as well as co-writer Tye Blue, discuss how this little-show-that-could became an international success story.

Mickey-Jo Theatre
Mickey-Jo Theatre

“If you leave after those 90 minutes, not filled with pure joy and with your face aching, then you're dead inside.” This is how leading lady Lauren Drew has been describing the “wacky, wonderful, and kind of chaotic” Titanique, in which she is starring as Céline Dion. This might seem an unusual reaction to a musical depicting tragedy, but this is no straightforward adaptation.

In Tye Blue, Marla Mindelle, and Constantine Rousouli’s musical parody, Céline herself was aboard the Titanic, and will finally tell its real story — one that combines a vague nostalgia for the 1997 James Cameron film with her own discography. It is a notion so absurd that the audience is kept laughing for a hundred uninterrupted minutes. While the ill-fated liner originally sailed towards New York, the off-Broadway cult hit has recently made the crossing in reverse, transferring to London’s West End and, by all accounts, hoping for a more successful arrival.

A few weeks ahead of their first preview performance, I’ve arrived to an infectiously gleeful rehearsal space where I’m met by Drew, readying to portray the Canadian chanteuse, as well as co-stars Rob Houchen and Jordan Luke Gage, who are cast as feuding romantic suitors Jack and Cal. For the trio who have spent much of their careers in hard-hitting shows, the lighthearted rehearsal room has been a refreshing delight.

“It's the most freeing rehearsal experience I've had in terms of just fully letting go of any inhibitions,” shares Gage. Drew adds that this energy was a factor from the beginning, “It was the most electric read through I've ever, ever been a part of in ten years of working in the industry.” Before I’ve left the room, Houchen and Gage have both eagerly pointed out a space on the prop table labelled ‘Rose’s Kazoo’, with Houchen stating, “that tells you everything you need to know about this show”.

For Houchen, known to audiences for his performances in Les Misérables and South Pacific, one of those serious shows in his rear-view is the Maury Yeston and Peter Stone musical Titanic. With a focus on the historical, the show omits the well-known romantic relationship conceived for the film. “People were like, ‘Oh are you playing Jack? Have you got curtains?’” he recalls, “And I’m like ‘No, I'm playing the guy that sees the iceberg.’ And now [in Titanique] I am, but not at all like you think.”

Titanique credit MattCrockett 1200 LT jordan luke gage rob houchen

The assumption he’d appear as Leonardo DiCaprio’s double is hardly an unreasonable one, with his centrally parted, sun-kissed strands. When I ask if he’s tickled by the prospect of a small number of audience members arriving at each performance with this expectation, it’s clear from his immediate laughter that the idea has already crossed his mind.

Sat alongside the actors is Blue, one of the show’s three writers, as well as its director, who has steered it from a downtown Manhattan basement to this high-profile arrival. Discussing this remarkable, and perhaps unexpected global success, Blue doesn’t fully detail its origins; the idea for Titanique was conceived while himself and co-writers Mindelle and Rousouli (who starred originally as Céline and Jack) were staging low-budget LA dinner theatre.

Their unauthorised musical parody of The Devil Wears Prada saw Mindelle, an unhinged wit, singing Miley Cyrus’s “Wrecking Ball” atop an exercise ball immediately after her character had been hit by a Toyota. It serves as a charming footnote in the show’s history that the West End production will count a legitimate The Devil Wears Prada musical (currently playing at the Dominion Theatre) among its esteemed theatreland neighbours.

“What I do know about Broadway is that the shows that are getting produced, by and large, are approached in a very commercial way,” says Blue. “I think because we never had some big entity over us being like, ‘it needs to be like this. It's too gay. You’ve got to appeal to this market.’ Because we were never encumbered by something like that, we just made something that was authentic to us.”

If there is any question of how seamlessly Titanique’s sense of humour (which offers enough cultural references to overfill a lifeboat) will translate to British audiences, Blue isn’t worried. “I'm hoping that people see this as a type of a panto, something that honours that style of your culture while also giving a lot of heart.” A newcomer to the West End, which he speaks of with equal amounts of faux-grandeur and genuine reverence, Blue shares: “I'm hopeful that British audiences will let themselves loose a little bit so that they can really get the full experience.”

Titanique 1200 LT credit Mark Senior

A big part of that experience is surely going to be Drew’s performance as Céline, and she knows that it will take more than her proven vocal chops to meet expectations. “Because she’s iconic in so many different ways, there’s so much to live up to,” Drew says. The Welsh star of Six and Les Misérables recalls being told over the years she had that “kooky Céline energy”, and notes “the real thing with this is getting her ‘isms’ and landing the comedy and the correct tone”. In addition to belting multi-octave ballads, she will be given free reign to puppeteer Jack and Rose in an extended comic monologue. Off Broadway, this semi-viral moment has previously featured character impressions, elaborate lip-sync dance routines, and eight minute long original songs.

I ask if the concept of having to conceive a new segment nightly is intimidating, and Drew describes a trial-by-fire moment at her final audition when she was asked to spend a few minutes simply inhabiting the persona of Céline, culminating in an exchange of vocal riffs between her and the panel. “It did introduce me to the world of what this was going to be very quickly,” she says.

As we further discuss the nature of its comedy, I’m moved to ask Gage and Houchen how it feels to be a part of a show lovingly referred to by its creators as a “gay fantasia”. Both have recently been involved in staging queer stories as creatives (Jordan as writer of a new musical Redcliffe and Rob as a producer of I Am Harvey Milk) but forged much of their careers playing straight romantic leads. “It’s very liberating, I’ve never played a queer role,” shares Houchen, with Gage adding, “I've always played straight roles for like the last ten years since graduating.”

Ironically, both are still playing the straight male love interests in this story, but cherishing the chance to be a part of something unashamedly camp. Rousoli, Houchen’s predecessor in the role of Jack, credits the early support of groups of gay fans with the show’s immediate success and buzzy word-of-mouth. Houchen assures us all that he has friends bringing “gaggles of gays” to watch the show — a collective noun he immediately qualifies with an alternative: “Minogues”.

Titanique credit MattCrockett lauren drew

Gage notes another difference between this and the roles for which he’s become well known (as the original Romeo in & Juliet, as well as JD in Heathers, and Clyde in Bonnie & Clyde). “Cal has hardly any redeeming qualities, but I kind of love it,” he says. “The thing I love about the show is it's taking what we know of the film Titanic and those characteristics, but hamming it up so much. So it's really leaning into Cal's selfishness and really leaning into how earnest Jack is.”

As we discuss the show’s extraordinary achievements thus far, including runs in Australia and Canada, I ask Blue if he’d ever suspected, in those early days, that the show might have this kind of international scope. “We never approached Titanique with any sort of aspirations or false delusions about it being this big global thing,” he says. “It was just a silly thing that we would get together for once a week and drink wine and make each other laugh. I think pieces that originate from places like that are the shows that producers should be looking for.”

There’s an easy comparison to be made with Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss’s Why Am I So Single?, a recent meta-musical that depicts those exact circumstances, but even award-winning juggernauts like A Chorus Line were crafted under deceptively similar conditions. Drew makes a comparison with Marlow and Moss’s first musical Six, another global hit. An alumnus of one of the show’s earliest UK tours, Drew describes the way that Titanique is a similar little-show-that-could, put together by close friends, whose success has seen it ascend from humble beginnings to international acclaim. However, given its subject matter, perhaps the one place Titanique may not work is at sea: as Houchen points out, “I just don’t know if this is going to work on cruise ships.”

Book Titanique tickets on LondonTheatre.co.uk

This article first appeared in the January 2025 issue of London Theatre Magazine.

Photo credit: main image and inset Jordan Luke Gage, Lauren Drew, and Rob Houchen. (Photos by Matt Crockett). Production image. (Photo by Mark Senior)

Originally published on

Subscribe to our newsletter to unlock exclusive London theatre updates!

  • Get early access to tickets for the newest shows
  • Access to exclusive deals and promotions
  • Stay in the know about news in the West End
  • Get updates on shows that are important to you

You can unsubscribe at any time. Privacy Policy