The Tony-winning Best Musical of 1997 and the Oscar-winning Best Picture of 1997 were both titled Titanic and told the same tale: the disastrous maiden voyage of a supposedly indestructible “Ship of Dreams,” which struck an iceberg 95 miles from land and took 1,517 souls to watery graves. It remains the most famous maritime tragedy of the last century.

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Hardly an apt notion for a musical, you’d think, but that’s seriously underestimating the stirring melodies and heartfelt lyrics which Maury Yeston pinned to the project. One of his greatest and most complex scores is filled with music that is majestic, then somber, loving in its ballads, hymn-like on occasion and more-often-than-not soaring.

Problematic reviews came close to scuttering the show the first time around, but the public came to its rescue. Titanic ran 804 performances on Broadway and won all five of its Tony nominations:........

© Observer