.a.new.concept

In 1994 I received a telephone call from the owner of the Prince of Wales hotel in Williamstown, Andrew Singer:

Was I interested in writing a show about the maiden voyage of the Titanic? The audience would be the ship's passengers, the show would be performed as the evening's entertainment - with top class food, music and dancing - and, at the end of the evening, the ship would sink and the audience would go home.

We arranged a meeting and discussed the whole idea. I was excited and totally captured by Andrew's enthusiasm and imagination! A year or two earlier, two actors had performed a re-enactment of the voyage but only on a casual basis. Now Andrew wanted to enlarge the whole concept and run a show every Saturday.

He envisaged sailors leaping around above the diners (oops! the passengers!). He wanted a girl swinging from the roof, singing! He wanted fireworks exploding above the domed glass ceiling! He already had sound effects of the collision with the iceberg and wanted to use them as a finale!

That meeting was the start of a seven year association with what was to become:

I ended up writing a number of different shows - all set on and about the Titanic. The first couple were experimental and were altered from performance to performance. Eventually we got it almost right and The Maiden Voyage of the Titanic ran for almost two years.

.building.alterations

Then came alterations to the venue. The hotel was transformed into a ship complete with decks, living quarters above the roof and funnels atop the lot. Inside, the upper dining room became First Class and below, seen through a floor-well, were the Steerage passengers. At the psychological moment, an iceberg trundled past the First Class windows!

.music

A request came from Andrew (now known as Captain Andrew Singer) for MUSIC in the show. And so I learnt that I could write lyrics! The first musical was Titanic to New York and included songs, an Irish dancer (it was the time of River Dance!) and played to two decks at the same time - First Class and Steerage.

The shows ran every Saturday night and audiences enthusiastically joined in the make-believe. First Class passengers arrived in all the finery they could muster. They assembled a block away from the venue and were picked up by a horse-drawn carriage. They were served a First Class, five-course dinner, they drank champagne, danced on the dance-floor to the band and cheered when they were picked up by the rescue ship and arrived safely in New York.

Steerage passengers, dressed more casually and often as Irish immigrants, traded insults and joined in friendly rivalry with their 'betters' above.

More innovations from the Captain followed: more lights, extra effects, a ship's photographer and more Titanic memorabilia. A make-believe lift 'descended' (very convincingly!) with the steerage passengers to the lower deck where on the way to their tables, they passed glowing boilers and watery steel walls. At the sinking, water poured into under-floor channels and down the walls. Above, First Class passengers were provided with a full sized life-boat in which a select few would be able to escape the sinking ship.

.jessie.of.the.titanic

To take advantage of all these remarkable innovations, Jessie of the Titanic was written. This contained more songs, actors playing the parts of stewards and stewardesses, and audience members were given names of actual passengers on that fateful, voyage.

Jessie of the Titanic ran for three years.

After seven years of writing and directing for Titanic Entertainments I was ready to retire from theatre-restaurant! My husband, Geoff Senior, and I moved to the country and new writers have taken over.

The current show, Queen of the Ocean commenced in early 2006 and succeeded The Ship of Dreams, which had been running since 2003.

Audiences are still turning up every Saturday night to become 'passengers' on RMS Titanic.

Have a look at Titanic Entertainment's website — it's a revelation!