OTHER `TITANIC' SAILS INTO L.A.; TONY-WINNING MUSICAL BOLDLY SINGS ABOUT SINKING.

Byline: Reed Johnson Daily News Staff Writer

The Broadway sharks started circling even before rehearsals had begun for the musical ``Titanic.''

Then, inevitably, came the flood of caustic jokes.

``Titanic Can't Sink!'' blared one headline, referring to alleged technical difficulties besetting the $10 million show's three-level hydraulic set design.

Other scribes simply ridiculed the entire notion of a Great White Way spectacular based on the White Star Line's most famous fiasco (``All singing, all dancing, all drowning ...'').

And when the show finally opened in April 1997 at New York's Lunt-Fontanne Theatre to mostly unflattering reviews, it looked as if ``Titanic'' might turn out to be one of the worst high-tech failures since, well, the Titanic.

Recalling the negative advance buzz, Peter Stone's voice acquires an icy edge.

``The press was very much wanting to write, `Titanic Sinks Again,' `Titanic Hits Another Iceberg,' '' says the veteran writer of ``Titanic'' and a string of other hit musicals including ``1776'' and ``The Will Rogers Follies.''

``They had the headlines written because they thought it was very unlikely, just like they did on `1776.' They didn't like us doing it. They didn't want us to do it.''

But after ``Titanic'' had hauled away five 1997 Tony Awards, including best musical, some of the major New York critics began humming a different tune and upgrading their estimation of the show, which opens Sunday at the Ahmanson Theatre.

``I thought it was very, very praiseworthy that so many critics would've (done) that,'' says Maury Yeston, ``Titanic's'' composer.

Hey, nothing wrong with a little historical revisionism. Without it, after all, the Titanic legend probably wouldn't continue to fascinate us, 87 years after the great ship sank off Nova Scotia with 1,522 lives lost.

From the outset, Yeston saw the Titanic's story as being fundamentally about three things: the nobility of human heroism and self-sacrifice; the breakdown of faith in technological progress; and the beginning of the upending of traditional European class structures.

``The ship embodied the great dreams of the people aboard,'' says Yeston, a previous Tony winner for his music and lyrics to ``Nine'' and a Tony nominee for ``Grand Hotel.''

``For the third class, it was a dream of a better life in the New World. For the second class, it was the dream of a luxurious ocean voyage so that they could imitate the lifestyle of the rich and famous. And for the first class, of course, it was a celebration of their complete hegemony over the world. And you know, when that ship hit that iceberg, all those dreams crashed at once. And the age of anxiety was born.''

The risky idea of fusing these themes into a mass-appeal Broadway show first occurred to Yeston a dozen years ago, when an oceanographer's discovery of the wrecked Titanic coincided with the Challenger space shuttle disaster a few months later.

Both incidents, Yeston says, shook up the belief - borne of the Industrial Revolution - that bigger, stronger and faster always equals better.

``I began to realize that this is ... a central myth of the 20th century, a myth of pride going before the fall, the myth of overwhelming reliance on this infallible notion of technology, the myth that we can actually dominate nature,'' Yeston says.

Accordingly, he set out to concoct music that would evoke the hubristic optimism and imperial pomp of Edwardian England. Rather than snappy Broadway show tunes, the composer envisioned a more operatic score that might suggest the work of such turn-of-the-century composers as Britten, Vaughan Williams and, especially, Elgar.

``Here was an opportunity to go to the broad symphonic music of British imperial civilization, from Gilbert and Sullivan straight through to the early 20th-century British symphonists, an almost operatic musical form that was going to use musical themes as symbols and that was going to make large references from one section of the show to the other through music,'' Yeston explains.

The next challenge was to express those musical ideas through a compelling dramatic structure, one that would give ``Titanic'' the feel of a timely fable rather than a nostalgic period piece.

Enter Stone, whose experiences with ``1776'' and ``The Will Rogers Follies'' made him something of a specialist in making history sit up and talk.

``When I made the decision to do `1776,' basically it was because I didn't know any of that history,'' Stone says. ``And I couldn't believe it. It was incredible to me that I had gone through school and college and graduate school and didn't know any facts about our own national legend.''

At first, Stone says, he didn't want anything to do with a musical about the Founding Fathers because he thought it would be ``appallingly boring.'' What changed his mind was hearing composer Sherman Edwards' opening song, ``Sit Down, John.'' Stone caught the song's spirit of affectionate impertinence, ``and I understood the whole show very quickly.''

``Titanic'' was an easier sell because the story of the voyage and the sinking lent itself to a classical dramatic structure.

``The astonishing thing about `Titanic' was that it is perfectly suited to the stage,'' says Stone. ``It satisfies all of the Aristotelian requirements for theater. It's in a confined place, in a confined period of time, it has tragic heroes and tragic villains and tragic bystanders even. It has valor, it has courage, it has survival, it has even shameful and selfish behavior. It has everything that one could want for a story, plus it has a terrific second act curtain (hitting the iceberg).''

Although the musical's outcome is never in doubt, its authors endeavored to immerse the audience in the story so they might temporarily forget what lies ahead.

``I thought Peter was a great idea for that,'' Yeston says, ``because he had done the same thing with `1776,' in which everybody knows that we signed the Declaration of Independence, but you'd never believe it watching that show.''

As for the latest movie treatment of the Titanic legend, you won't hear Stone and Yeston second-guessing James Cameron's $100 million, Oscar-winning Hollywood disaster epic.

``I thought it was wonderful,'' Yeston says, ``I thought it was everything that a great, literalizing movie should be.''

Stone, a successful screenwriter himself (``Sweet Charity,'' ``The Taking of Pelham 1-2-3''), liked the movie, too - except for that minor matter of the characters played by Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio.

``One of the things that surprised me about the film when I finally saw it, what I didn't like about it was, with the richest, most interesting, most absolutely compelling set of characters, they chose to invent two kids who were not terribly interesting,'' Stone says. ``The fact that they became sex symbols and the young girls went crazy is a good thing for the producers.''

Though some of the musical's characters are fictional composites, the main ones are not: the millionaire industrialists; Ida Straus, the Macy's co-owner who chose to perish with her husband of 40 years; Capt. E.J. Smith; conniving White Star Line owner J. Bruce Ismay; the idealistic ship-builder Thomas Andrews; and the dauntless wireless operator Harold Bride, who Yeston regarded as a sort of ``introverted Internet hacker.''

One thing Stone did like about the movie were its stirring, startlingly realistic images.

``They (the images) have helped us on this road company,'' he says, ``because having those images fresh in the mind of everybody, we don't need to try so hard technically. We can be much more impressionistic.''

So far, ``Titanic'' is giving the impression of a show working up a good head of steam. After Los Angeles, it sails on to Denver, Seattle, Chicago, Boston and Washington, D.C., and probably into the new millennium - where someday, no doubt, more generations will interpret the saga all over again.

``You know, the true opening song of the show compares the building of the Titanic to the great projects of civilization, starting with the pyramids and the gothic cathedrals,'' Yeston says.

``And so in many ways there's a nostalgia for that, too - a nostalgia for a great project, that we all strive and we believe in, that falls. We want to build high, and we want to build greatly. And even though we fail, that's still a very praiseworthy aspect of what humans do - to strive.''

The facts

What: ``Titanic.''

Where: Ahmanson Theatre, Los Angeles Music Center, 135 N. Grand Ave.

When: Opening performance 4 p.m. Sunday. Regular performances at 8 p.m. Tuesdays through Fridays, 2 and 8 p.m. Saturdays, 2 p.m. Sundays; through Feb. 28. Additional performances 7:30 p.m. Jan. 17, 24 and 31 and Feb. 7 and 14. Thursday matinees at 2 p.m. Feb. 18 and 25.

Tickets: $30 to $70. Call [phone].

CAPTION(S):

4 photos

PHOTO (1) All is well on deck during Act 1 of the musical ``Titanic,'' which opens Sunday at the Ahmanson Theatre. The show won five Tony Awards for its Broadway run.

Charlotte Schmid-Maybach/Special to the Daily News

(2) During the ``Titanic'' number ``The Blame,'' Capt. E.J. Smith (William Parry), left, owner J. Bruce Ismay (Adam Heller) and builder Thomas Andrews (Kevin Gray) blame each other for the ship's troubles.

(3) no caption (passengers wearing life preservers)

(4 -- color -- color) Unsinkable

Charlotte Schmid-Maybach/Special to the Daily News