Theatre News

Titanic musical resurfaces at Southwark Playhouse this summer

Southwark Playhouse has announced a further three shows – including a new production of the Tony-winning musical based on the Titanic disaster – to be staged this summer in its new Elephant & Castle home.

Running in main house The Large from 31 July to 31 August 2013 (previews from 26
July), Titanic will be staged by the same creative team behind recent Southwark Playhouse revivals of Parade, Mack & Mabel and Victor/Victoria, led by director Thom Southerland.

Based on real people aboard the doomed liner in 1912, Maury Yeston (Nine) and Peter Stone’s musical was first staged on Broadway in 1997, shortly before the release of James Cameron’s blockbuster film. It ran for two years and picked up five Tonys, including Best Musical.

Unaware of the fate that awaits them, the Third Class immigrants dream of a better life in America, the newly-enfranchised Second Class dream of achieving the lifestyles of the rich and famous, and the millionaire Barons of the First Class dream of their hegemony lasting forever.

The production at the Southwark will be in an intimate chamber style and marks this version’s European premiere.

Titanic is preceded in The Large, from 28 June to 20 July 2013 (previews from 26 June), by the first professional UK revival in over 50 years of Peter Ustinov‘s The Moment of Truth.

Ustinov’s play will be directed by Rob Laycock and is about the mechanics of toppling governments, the pretences of war and the power of propaganda.

Finally, an adaptation of Herman Melville’s novel Billy Budd runs in The Little from 19 July-10 August 2013 (previews from 17 July).

Adapted by Louis O. Coxe and Robert Chapman, Melville’s classic saga of events aboard a British man-of-war during the Napoleonic wars will be directed by Sebastian Harcombe.

As previously announced, Southwark Playhouse will launch its new temporary home from next month with productions of Tanzi Libre and Juana in a Million.