“Shall We Go For It?” How ‘Titaníque’ Sailed From a Grocery Store Basement to Broadway

To say the first preview performance of Titaníque was a success would be putting it mildly—at least according to costars and cocreators Marla Mindelle and Constantine Rousouli. “Last night it was like people were on meth,” a giddy Rousouli tells me. Between bites of a protein bar, Mindelle doubles down on the electricity that coursed through the theater during their first Broadway preview, which received a whopping five standing ovations. “My friend was like, ‘You should have given everyone cocaine,’” she says. “And I was like, ‘No one needed cocaine. They were already completely on drugs.’”

The best friends are recounting the unforgettable evening to me as we sit in Mindelle’s teal dressing room backstage at the 1,700-seat St. James Theatre, where Titaníque has recently docked for a 16-week limited run. The pair’s cult-hit musical, which they cowrote and cocreated with director Tye Blue, has made a magnificent voyage over the last decade, one that has seen Mindelle, Rousouli, and company perform their gonzo musical comedy at a dinner theater in Los Angeles, in the bowels of a former Upright Citizens Brigade basement theater, and on the West End in London. But unlike the show’s namesake ship, Titaníque has managed to make it to its final destination: Broadway.

A word-of-mouth downtown hit, Titaníque bears more than a passing resemblance to another buzzy show that made it to Broadway, the Tony-winning Oh, Mary! Both projects take a particularly tragic moment in the nation’s history—in this case, the sinking of the Titanic—and tell the story from a different, kookier perspective. But unlike its Broadway predecessor, Titaníque has more than just American history to mine for comedy—it also lampoons James Cameron’s 1997 Oscar-winning blockbuster, Titanic, starring a young Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio as star-crossed lovers Rose and Jack. As if that weren’t enough, Titaníque also dares to ask this question: What if Céline Dion, the iconic French Canadian chanteuse who sang the movie’s timeless anthem, “My Heart Will Go On,” were actually aboard the Titanic in 1912? And, what’s more, what if Jack and Rose’s fictional love story were set to Dion’s inimitable catalogue, which includes but is not limited to certified adult-contemporary bops like “Taking Chances,” “I Surrender,” and “All by Myself”? With that hyperspecific, insanely stupid premise, Titaníque set sail.

Of course, an idea this profoundly dumb (which, in this case, is a compliment) could only be conceived under the influence of alcohol. “When this idea came to be, we were drunk at a bar,” says Mindelle, who plays Dion as an omniscient diva narrator. “Making each other laugh. We were miserable in 2016,” adds Rousouli, who stars as Jack, iconically played by a young DiCaprio. Tried-and-true theater kids, Mindelle and Rousouli had already ascended to theater’s highest echelon by 2016. Mindelle had tread the Broadway boards in a revival of South Pacific and had originated plum roles in Cinderella and the Sister Act musical, while Rousouli had taken his turn playing pretty boy Broadway roles like Link Larkin in Hairspray and Fiyero in Wicked. Still, like many hyperambitious, multihyphenate performers, Broadway wasn’t enough. “I got on Broadway, but then I was still always craving, like, God, I really want authority over my life and my career,” shares Mindelle.

So, independently of each other, Mindelle and Rousouli moved to Los Angeles, where they both were convinced a fresh start in Hollywood would turn them into stars overnight. Hollywood had other plans. “That’s where your dreams go to die,” says Rousouli, referring to Los Angeles. Mindelle puts it another way: “LA slapped me on the face so fucking hard. They were like, ‘Sorry, diva girl!’”

While working at an LA dinner theater, the two struggling actors met Tye Blue, who was also living out his own Hollywood nightmare. “I was casting reality TV shows and making okay money, but it was still very toxic and not making me feel good about my life,” Blue tells me.

“You wake up and you’re like, Hmm, I’ve been here for five years and nothing’s happened. I guess I should listen to somebody that says, ‘You should create your own stuff,’” says Rousouli. “And I was like, Fuck you.”

Thankfully, Mindelle was already well-versed in creating her own stuff. For a certain type of gay boy with a musical-theater addiction and who had unfettered access to the internet as a teenager (a.k.a. me), Mindelle has been a household name for decades. In the aughts, Mindelle was musical-theater-YouTube-famous thanks to videos like “Marla Mindelle – Colors of the Wind” and a performance of a cabaret she wrote and starred in, showcasing her sharp wit, comedic fearlessness, and powerful and flexible mix belt. But while thousands of musical-theater fans online could see—instantly, clearly—that she was a star, Mindelle wasn’t treated as such at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music (CCM), where she studied in a prestigious BFA program.

“When I was in college, that senior year, I was never cast in a role,” says Mindelle. “So I was like, Well, then I’m just gonna write my own thing. And the second I wrote something for myself, I was like, I don’t think that I’ll ever be handed opportunities. I don’t know if I’ll ever be that kind of person. I might have to do it for myself.”

This time, she wasn’t totally alone. Over meals of truffle fries and what they guess was imitation crab (“It was disgusting,” Mindelle admits in hindsight), and with the aid of $75 and some drink tickets—their payment for their work at the dinner theater—Mindelle, Rousouli, and Blue got to work on making their own shows. “I just needed something that I could focus on, that I could control in a way, that I could bring into existence,” says Blue. “I just carved out space in my free time on the weekends and on my nights off to bring this show to life.” As they got to work, Mindelle, Rousouli, and Blue discovered that silly musical parodies of beloved films worked well in Los Angeles—famously a movie town—and crafted a number of shows based on the concept: musical spoofs of films like The Devil Wears Prada, Cruel Intentions, and Troop Beverly Hills. (“Troop is ready [for Broadway],” says Rousouli.) But it was their Titanic parody musical, which was first officially performed at LA’s Sorting Room theater as a one-night-only concert in December of 2017, that stuck.

Ironically, Titaníque’s success in LA brought the trio right back to New York. In 2018 they put up a concert version of the show at The Green Room 42. Four years later, with the help of producer Eva Price, they put up an Off Broadway production of the show at—where else?—Asylum NYC, a theater located in the basement of a Gristedes, a New York City–based supermarket.

“After the pandemic, we started off Broadway in the basement of a Gristedes with masks on the audience,” Mindelle recalls. “It was grungy and dirty, and we’re in a basement with rats and under Gristedes, and trash juice is on my face and there’s 199 seats. It just felt like this intimate, incredible cult experience.” After a couple of weeks in the basement, word of mouth exploded. Titaníque would go on to win the Lucille Lortel Award for outstanding musical, and Mindelle would win outstanding lead performer in a musical. In November 2022, the show moved to the 300-seat Daryl Roth Theatre, near Union Square, where it would run for nearly three years.

Soon, productions were popping up all over the world—in Canada, Australia, Paris, you name it. Most notably, Titaníque made a reverse voyage across the Atlantic, finding harbor on London’s West End, where it was nominated for three Olivier Awards, winning for best entertainment or comedy play and best actor in a supporting role in a musical.

Mindelle is framed by her awards as we chat about the long and winding road of their little basement musical. The fact that Titaníque has now led Mindelle, Rousouli, and Blue back to Broadway is perhaps the funniest joke yet. “I literally left New York in 2009, maybe, or maybe earlier. I just walked away from it because of some bad experiences that I had had. And I went to LA, and it was the same,” says Blue. “I’m really glad to be back at my old stomping grounds and making magic on this scale, which is a very surreal thing to do every day.”

Rousouli adds, “I remember telling myself when I left in 2012—I said, The only way I’ll come back to New York City [is] if it’s on my terms in this business.”

Of course, Mindelle and Rousouli are only part of the equation that makes Titaníque sing. The glitzy Broadway cast is a mix of old and new actors, with Titaníque veterans Frankie Grande, John Riddle, and the Olivier Award–winning Layton Williams starring opposite fresh faces like Grammy nominee Deborah Cox, four-time Emmy winner Jim Parsons, and Scream star Melissa Barrera.

“It truly has been a fever dream,” says Grande, who’s been with the show since the Green Room 42 concert. The Broadway vet and reality TV star plays Victor Garber—no, not Thomas Andrews, the Titanic builder whom Garber plays in the movie, but literally the actor Victor Garber. Despite having been involved with the show for almost eight years, he’s still adjusting to the new production. The two-week rehearsal period—half the amount of time that a typical Broadway production gets—was, for Grande, “disastrous.” “I know the show, but I don’t know this version of the show with these people,” Grande explains.

Having the new cast members “changes the molecules,” says Riddle. He stars as Cal Hockley, Rose’s wealthy fiancé, portrayed in the movie by Billy Zane. “Now that we’re performing it, I feel my newness to the situation more than maybe I [thought I would]. I still don’t know it well enough yet,” says Parsons, who stars as Rose’s mother, Ruth DeWitt Bukater, played by Frances Fisher in the film.

Others, like Williams, who won the Olivier for playing the dual roles of the Seaman and the Iceberg, are ready to show the world what they’ve been cooking up for years now. “When I invite people to see the show that have never seen it before, they’re like, How the hell did he win an award for this? They waited an hour and 20 minutes to see the proof in the pudding.” Let’s just say, the pudding is delicious. “I think Judi Dench has won awards for less,” Parsons says of his costar.

For the golden-voiced Cox, who sang the international hit “Nobody’s Supposed to Be Here” and played Whitney Houston’s character in the musical version of The Bodyguard, “it was very helpful to have some OGs in the room,” she says. Cox plays the unsinkable Molly Brown, memorably portrayed by Kathy Bates in the movie. “It was great to feed off of their energy and their specificities, because they’re very deliberate,”

Barrera hopped on a plane from Austin, Texas, where she lives, to audition for Titaníque in person, instead of logging on to Zoom for a tryout to play Rose DeWitt Bukater, famously brought to life by a young Kate Winslet. “I’ve been wanting to do theater, and being on Broadway has always been my biggest dream. I went to NYU for musical theater. That’s what I envisioned my life being,” says Barrera, who’s making her Broadway debut in the production. “I left the audition and I was like, This is what I’m supposed to be doing.”

The creators have done their best to tailor the show to the eclectic talent they have amassed. “We have the best singer on earth, Deborah Cox. We have the best comedian, Jim Parsons,” says Mindelle. “It’s like, how do we make it special for them? Let’s keep the core of it, but let’s change the jokes.” The beauty of performing blissfully stupid comedy night after night is that no one can afford to take themselves too seriously. At the invite-only dress rehearsal I attend, everyone becomes the butt of the joke at some point—whether that joke pertains to Grande and his pop star little sister, Ariana; Parsons’ Big Bang Theory run; or Barrera’s exit from the Scream franchise. In one section of the musical, Mindelle goes on an improv run that sees her, depending on the show, go on a tear about why Wicked: For Good should have been called Wicked: For Gay or what Hugh Jackman and Sutton Foster’s wedding vows would be. “It’s honestly like stand-up. Sometimes it hits and sometimes it doesn’t,” says Mindelle. “But that’s showbiz.”

While some bits have been added and subtracted, the core of the show remains very much the same, and intentionally so. “We’ve been nervous this whole time that these jokes are eight years old. Do they hold up?” says Blue. “We did a revision for Broadway. Then we got into the studio and realized that everything that we had rewritten was shitty. And so rehearsals were literally just like, ‘All right, revert back to the old version.’”

Another thing that hasn’t changed is the show’s downtown, put-up-a-play-in-your-mom’s-basement energy. “I know that people love our scrappiness,” says Blue. “The fact that we were bold enough to do a big musical in a small way, the scrappiness came out of necessity.” To boot, Blue and Rousouli handmade the original props out of materials they bought at Joann, Michaels, and Hobby Lobby. Many of those props, including but not limited to a large eggplant and a cardboard cutout of Patti LuPone, have made it to the current Broadway production. “That shit traveled in boxes and bags across the country,” says Rousouli.

That can-do spirit is still at the center of Broadway’s Titaníque. “People loved it,” says Blue. “People, I think, see in those scrappy props, for example, an independent spirit and just a natural creative drive that found a way to make a show happen.”

As much as Titaníque is about the film Titanic, it’s really about Céline Dion. Mindelle has been playing the legendary singer on and off for the better part of 10 years, and Dion is an almost godlike figure to her. While Dion hasn’t made it to a Titaníque performance yet, her manager and publicist have. What would happen if the queen herself attended a Broadway performance of Titaníque?

“Marla will shit and gag,” says Rousouli.

“Oh my God. If she ever comes, I always say that I’ll faint,” says Mindelle. “She’ll walk onstage, over my dead body, and the show will be exactly the same.” She corrects herself. “It’ll be even better.” Rousouli laughs. “She won’t even pick up the script,” he says. Mindelle can’t help but break into her Dion impression, now second nature for her. “She’ll be like, ‘Okay, let’s go for a walk.’”

They joke, but their devotion to Dion is very serious. Mindelle credits Dion with being one of the three pop divas who taught her how to sing, alongside Whitney Houston and Mariah Carey. “That was my holy trinity,” she says. The team is well aware that Dion hasn’t had the easiest past decade. In January of 2016, her beloved husband, René Angélil, died at the age of 73. In 2022, Dion was diagnosed with a rare neurological disease, stiff-person syndrome, which led to her canceling shows and retreating from the public eye for a spell.