Tissues needed for Titanic event

For Lynn Hunt-Craib it can mean only one thing . . . it is sink or swim time. Because Lynn is the director of Titanic the Musical, perhaps them most ambitious piece of 'amateur dramatics' ever to grace a theatre stage in Shropshire.

When it premieres on Tuesday it will be the culmination of 12 months hard slog for Telford and District Light Operatic Players, all 60 of its cast members, plus 14-piece orchestra and three dogs. Not to mention the little matter of raising £25,000 to fund the production which has been a multi-million pound smash hit on Broadway.

Lynn's living room and her array of fancy props is a shrine to all those last minute preparations. Indeed, taking a well-earned break from rehearsals, Lynn's first words are: "My hands are still sticky from all the wigs."

She goes on to explain how, as break-a-leg time nears, her musical director husband has been driven to last-minute rehearsals around the family home and how cast members have been haunted by their roles playing real-life passengers and haven't been able sleep because they have been waking up in the middle of the night with songs from the show buzzing around their heads.

Since last May, Lynn and the cast have been immersed in watery story of one of the greatest real-life tragedies of the last 100 years. Eerily, during the last of the rehearsals for the show - which unravels in real time - the cast lived through the tragedy at the actual time that all those passengers lost their lives 95 years ago.

We all know what happened on that fateful day in April 1912: ship that could not sink hits iceberg and sinks. What is less known are life stories of the those on board, and the company's version aims to bring the perished passengers back from from the dead.

"I was at work and I heard some footsteps behind me and I thought, those are the footsteps of a man with a purpose - that's my EJ Smith, my Captain.

"It was Graham Yerb and I said to him 'Do you act?' - he said no. I said 'Do you sing?' He said I do in the bath." He got the part. He even had a history with ships, he was in the Navy and didn't mind growing a beard to get the authentic look.

To get into character, Lynn asked all the the cast to wear costume during rehearsals. Of course, with such a huge production there have been problems. The logistics of co-ordinating such a big cast, getting them along to rehearsals and learn their parts and sing all the songs was bound to throw up testing moments.

Set builder Robin Cooper had what was probably the most pressing problem for a ship famous for sinking. "Trying to make the ship look like it's going to sink," he says somewhat tight-lipped, perhaps mindful that loose lips do, in fact, sink ships.

Other minor hiccups have been the tears. As Lynn says, it's such an emotional story and with cast members doing extensive research into the real-lives of the tragic Titanic passengers there was bound to be one of actors bursting into bursting into tears every five minutes.

They even had controlled crying sessions to get some of the emotions out of the way so that, come the big performance, the tale would be watery because of its connection to the sea rather than with human teardrops.

Still, it's not always possible to hold back. Lynn says: "There is a little girl, aged five, and she was watching and asking 'Why don't the men get into the lifeboats' and she was told it was because they weren't allowed to go in them and it was women and children first.

"She said 'What happens to all the daddies?' They don't see their families and they drown. She was in floods of tears."

Robin offers a tip to the audience. "Bring a box of tissues. We will cry on the night, there will be real tears, there's no doubt about it."

* Titanic The Musical begins a five-day run at The Place, Oakengates, on April 24. Tickets available at the box office: 01952 382382