Coeur d'Alene Summer Theatre presents "Titanic: The Musical"

Showing Aug. 7 through 16, "Titanic: The Musical," winner of five Tony Awards, relives the sinking of the Titanic in the early hours of April 15, 1912. It remains the quintessential disaster of the 20th century, as 1,517 men, women and children lost their lives on the maiden voyage of the largest ship in the world at the time that was billed as unsinkable. 

The musical play examines the causes, conditions, and the characters involved in this ever-fascinating drama. This is the factual story of that ship, of her officers, crew and passengers, to be sure. Still, she will not, as has happened so many times before, serve as merely the background against which fictional, melodramatic narratives are recounted. The central character of our "Titanic" is the Titanic herself.  

The catastrophe had social ramifications that went far beyond that night's events. For the first time since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution in the early 19th Century, bigger, faster and stronger did not automatically prove to be better. Suddenly the very essence of "progress" had to be questioned; might the advancement of technology not always be progress?  

Nor was this the only question arising from the disaster. The accommodations of the ship, divided into first, second and third classes, mirrored almost exactly the class structure (upper, middle and lower) of the English-speaking world. But when the wide discrepancy between the number of survivors from each of the ship's classes was revealed — all but two of the women in first class were saved, while 155 women and children from second and third (mostly third) drowned — there was a new, long-overdue scrutiny of the prevailing social system and its values.   

Performances of "Titanic: The Musical" are Friday, Aug. 7, at 7:30 p.m.; Saturday, Aug. 8, at 2 p.m.; Sunday, Aug. 9, at 2 p.m.; Thursday, Aug. 13, at 7:30 p.m.; Friday, Aug. 14, at 7:30 p.m.; Saturday, Aug. 15, at 2 p.m. and Sunday, Aug. 16, at 2 p.m. 

Tickets are $50 to $192 and can be purchased online at www.cstidaho.com or at the box office 90 minutes before each showing at the Schuler Performing Arts Center at North Idaho College.