Titanique review: Celine Dion jukebox musical parody of Titanic is stubbornly stupid – and roaringly funny

There's little more joyful than the moment a laugh fizzes up and out, that bubbly rush of feeling delighted by a punchline, turn of phrase, reference or idea. It can be the best part of your day.

Titanique, the scrappy off-Broadway confection that asks "what if the hero of James Cameron's Titanic was actually Celine Dion all along?", lives in that moment.

Created by longtime Broadway performers Marla Mindelle (Sister Act, Cinderella), Constantine Rousouli (Wicked, Ghost) and director Tye Blue (who worked across a variety of theatre and TV projects, including the casting team for RuPaul's Drag Race), the production started as a joke between friends and built momentum from a one-night showing in Los Angeles to a short run in a 150-seat theatre in 2022.

Buzzy word-of-mouth that year propelled the show into a larger off-Broadway house in a run that continues to be extended, with international productions planned for Canada and the West End as well as here in Australia.

Playing at the tiny Grand Electric theatre, usually a home of circus-cabaret and comedy, this Sydney production wisely keeps the production small so that the performances can be (forgive me) titanic. Marney McQueen is a fanatically observed, fantastically energised Celine Dion with the vocal chops to back it up. The soul of the show, she keeps it moving and keeps it funny, playing with the audience like we're her co-conspirators, remaking the story with her at every step.

It's a fantastic cast: longtime performer and So You Think You Can Dance judge Matt Lee plays Victor Garber (yes, the actor); while Abu (who you may have seen in the beautiful Choir Boy for Sydney World Pride) tears it all down as the Iceberg. Rising musical theatre star Georgina Hopson plays Rose's rebellion and infatuation with abandon. Her mother, Ruth, is played with gleeful villainy by Stephen Anderson in light drag. Drew Weston comes straight out of Hallmark movies to play heart-throb Jack and, in a star-making turn, Abigail Dixon raises the roof as the "unsinkable" Molly Brown.

There's a riff, a joke, or a pop-culture reference as punctuation in just about every line, and the cast delights in knowing they're about to get us roaring. The production is one big wink-nudge combo.

It's almost unfathomable that something so frothy, deeply referential and stubbornly stupid (that's a compliment) could have such legitimate success. The show is built on a parody-musical playbook and the premise, I cannot stress enough, is that legendary singer Celine Dion was aboard the Titanic in 1912 and pops up in a Titanic museum to tell us the "real story". It references a dizzying array of pop culture deep cuts as it re-tells and re-mixes the 1997 film from love story to character actor cameos and beyond into disaster (Rose wears that fateful door like a backpack).

It wears its ambition equally alongside its irreverence – its Lucille Lortel and Off Broadway Alliance awards are mentioned in the same breath of listed accolades as its best indoor performance win at the premier parody awards night in gay pop culture, the Las Culturistas Culture awards. It's made for the audiences who built up its reputation: gay and queer people, those hyper-literate in pop culture, and the precise intersection of musical theatre and comedy sensibilities.

A little something is lost in translation – in Australia, its list of deeply American references feels a little lazy, like a string of comedy shortcuts (are we laughing because it's funny or because we're pleased we get the nod to a particular drag race lip-sync?) that avoid having to actually connect with the story or genuinely subvert audience expectations from their knowledge of and affection for the film.

It's perhaps not a surprise that the moments that feel genuinely sharp are the Australianisms Blue and Australian associate director and choreographer Cameron Mitchell have given space for in the script – a hit on a local jewellery chain, a description of "spooky-scary" sights Rose and Jack encounter on their way to steerage that include references to local scandal. More of this would have helped the show feel anchored (sorry) here, something built for us rather than imported at us – to keep the show in conversation with its US genesis, and to bring that spirit to its Australian equivalent audience.

New and up-to-the-minute references to politics and pop culture help with this, too, and there are just a couple sprinkled in: they bring important freshness and life to a show that thrives on being in-the-know alongside its audience like your funniest meme-fuelled group chat writ large, trading quotes like signals, wearing song lyrics like a hankie or carabiner.

But that slight remove or light script laziness doesn't stop the show from being funny, engaging and enjoyable; it might actually be unstoppable in that regard.

When the performance ended, I overheard a woman in the bathroom line say to her companion, "I don't think I've ever laughed that much in my entire life." She said it with a hint of wonder. In that same line, someone else said, "Wasn't that the funniest thing you've ever seen?" What a gift to leave us: being a little in awe of your own capacity for merriment.