Titanic, Southwark Playhouse, review - Telegraph When the RMS Titanic went down in the North Atlantic on April 15, 1912, with the loss of some 1500 lives, no one can have imagined that in the century to come, she would sink again, and again, and again. But that, in drama, documentary, film and fiction, has been her fate. So poignant is the legend of the great "unsinkable" liner and the dreadful toll of individual tragedies among her passengers and crew that it can apparently bear an infinity of retellings. It was the discovery of the wreckage of the Titanic in 1985 that inspired Maury Yeston to compose his musical about the disaster. It premiered on Broadway in 1997 to mostly poor reviews, but won five Tony Awards, including Best Musical, and the updraft of publicity surrounding James Cameron's epic film, which opened in December 1997, helped pique public interest. While the original Broadway production was a lavish affair, Thom Southerland's revival for the Southwark Playhouse has elegantly minimalist designs by David Woodhead - the scale of the ship intimated, rather than imitated, by a spare collection of ropes, rails and a mobile platform. All other effects are achieved with Howard Hudson's beautiful lighting. The cast is pared-down too, metamorphosing from first class to third and back again with nippy quick-changes of costume and accent. Titanic is a musical with a pronounced social agenda. Peter Stone's book personalizes the catastrophe by focusing on a quartet of couples based on real passengers: elderly Isidore Straus and his devoted wife, Ida, are travelling first class, while Alice Beane, from second-class, has social ambitions which her husband, Edgar, finds mortifying. Also travelling second-class is Lady Caroline Neville, who has eloped with Charles Clarke, a journalist who is her social inferior, while in third class, Irish Kate McGowan conducts an on-board romance with Jim Farrell. Driven by the notion of the ship as an artefact of human aspiration, bearing its freight of individual hopes and wishes, the narrative follows a steady trajectory from the excitement of the maiden voyage, towards its inevitable conclusion. With exhilaratingly crisp performances from the ensemble cast and band (it is almost unfair to mention individual performances, but Dudley Rogers as Isidore and Judith Street as Ida are particularly touching), Southerland directs with infallible emotional nuance and brings a real touch of Broadway glitter to the faintly utilitarian surroundings of the Southwark Playhouse. Until Aug 31. Tickets: 020 7407 0234; southwarkplayhouse.co.uk