My heart will go onstage: Céline Dion and Dolly Parton celebrated in outlandish musicals
Most biodramas about musicians sing from the same hymn sheet: chart the rise to fame and any fall from grace, flit between studio and stage, make room for relevant lovers and demons. Then add the hits. Two new musicals may find Céline Dion belting out My Heart Will Go On and Dolly Parton warbling I Will Always Love You. But theatregoers should also prepare for this wild-eyed version of Dion to raise merry hell on the Titanic and this particular Parton to miraculously appear in the childhood bedroom of a depressed 40-year-old called Kevin.
The off-kilter spirit of the shows, Titanique and Here You Come Again, make them more akin to the Robbie Williams biopic Better Man, featuring a CGI chimpanzee, than Timothée Chalamet’s Oscar-tipped turn as Bob Dylan in A Complete Unknown.
Titanique, which opened this month at the Criterion theatre in London, stars Lauren Drew as the Canadian legend who we first meet gatecrashing the Titanic museum to give her own version of the ocean liner’s fatal 1912 voyage. (Turns out she was onboard – who knew?) Drew is joined by a game cast – including Layton Williams as the villainous iceberg – for a brilliantly bizarre show. How does she describe this outlandish concoction to those who haven’t seen it?
“It’s a parody of the Titanic movie with all of the characters that people know and love, like Jack and Rose [played in the film by Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet]. However, Céline Dion decides to make an appearance and is like: ‘Oh, no, no, no! This is not how it happened.’ And then it’s just 100 minutes of unapologetic, crazy joy.”
As well as becoming the ringleader for some raucous comedy, Drew has to deliver a string of the singer’s intimidating hits. “It’s hilarious because you think to yourself, ‘OK, I’ve done that big one. Oh no, now I’ve got I Surrender coming up. Oh, straight into My Heart Will Go On. Here we go, better pop a Jakemans [throat sweet] quick!” And she is performing eight shows a week: “I’ve probably never looked after myself to this degree on a job before.”
Drew was already a Dion superfan when she got the gig. Seeing the powerhouse singer perform at Hyde Park in London in 2019 remains “one of the best nights of my life”. But Dion has been more than a vocal inspiration for her. “It’s mainly because of how well she’s always come across as a human being that I’ve loved her so much.” The comedy was created before the documentary I Am: Céline Dion, in which the singer reveals her experiences living with stiff person syndrome. “You see her away from the stage, and see how she was with people, even in those really dark times – she’s still so kind and wonderful and warm.”
Likewise it is Dolly Parton’s personality, as much as her music, that is celebrated in Here You Come Again, which is on tour. “People look to her for words of wisdom and a bit of guidance,” says Tricia Paoluccio, who plays Dolly. In the play, the singer arrives smelling of “bubble bath and honey”, summoned up by Kevin during the pandemic. His boyfriend is treating him badly, his career is going down the toilet and he has just moved back into his parents’ house where he is drinking too much and self-isolating in the attic. Kevin’s room is covered in Parton paraphernalia and one day she steps out of a poster to serve up some supper, soothe him with a rendition of Hush-a-Bye Hard Times and turn his wine into water. It’s as warm as Titanique is wild: unlike the ribald Céline, Dolly sweetly feigns ignorance when the audience snort at the script’s double entendres.
Paoluccio says the show is designed for those “who need it” much as Kevin needs a dose of Dolly. “I think in order to receive the show, you have to have that openness to it.” Like Titanique, which Paoluccio saw in New York and calls “a real romp, very fun and silly”, Here You Come Again ambushes audiences with an unexpected storyline for its superstar subject.
Paoluccio not only plays Dolly but co-wrote the musical (much like Titanique’s co-creator Marla Mindelle originated the role of Céline). Her aim, says Paoluccio, was to introduce audiences to an icon in an everyday setting, giving “a sneak peek of what she might really be like” away from the cameras. “I love that she’s in full glam and yet we see Dolly making the bed and serving humble food.”
Paoluccio grew up with Parton’s music. When she was young, living on a farm in California, she heard Here You Come Again and “knew I needed to memorise that song”. She learned not just the lyrics but how to capture “that little crackle and scratch” in Parton’s voice, that same vibrato. Her Dolly voice became a parlour game: “I’d be in a serious play, a Chekhov, in costume and all, and then I’d suddenly [she adopts the unmistakable twang] start talking like Dolly! And the cast would like it.” In 2001, she played Parton and other supporting characters in a show about Tammy Wynette directed by Paoluccio’s husband, Gabriel Barre, at Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium.
She longed to play Dolly again. “But I didn’t want it to be like: ‘I’m Tricia and I love Dolly.’ I just wanted to be Dolly Parton.” Here You Come Again was written with Barre (who also directs) and Bruce Vilanch. “We set it in the pandemic because that’s when we wrote it. And one of my best friends in England was living in his parents’ attic during the quarantine.” (Its UK production is relocated to Halifax in an adaptation by British playwright Jonathan Harvey.)
Their script was dispatched to Dolly who has developed her own, separate bio-musical. She read it, watched a video of Paoluccio performing and gave her blessing. “I’m probably the happiest actor you’ll ever interview,” she tells me. “Can you imagine that – the person you loved and admired your whole life? To have her say yes really means a lot.”
She describes her performance as channelling, rather than impersonating, Parton – “letting her shine through me”. She found it surprisingly easy to go off script, too. For Drew, who is also required to do some crowd work in Titanique, improvising in character was part of her audition. She went in “full throttle”, even walking through the door as Dion. “I wore a Nadine Merabi playsuit: sequins, feathers, the full shebang.” In the final audition, she was asked to extemporise: “Can you just vamp on the piano? Just be Céline Dion …” The result was chaotic, she admits, but a lot of fun – much like the show itself.
Swapping her own Welsh accent for heightened Quebec French, she began to find a tone that was goofy and sexy, a voice that could embrace the audience (purring her signature line, “Shall we go for it?”). She perfected the Dion chest thump and fist pump, too. It involved binging on videos of Dion on and off stage, endlessly practising in front of her floor-length mirror at home (“You can imagine my fiance whenever he walked in!”) then trying out the accent when ordering coffees or shopping. “It all helped me find my version of her.” Luckily, considering the show’s more outre moments: “It takes a lot to embarrass me!”
Dion’s team have seen and enjoyed the show but Drew can’t fathom the notion of spotting Céline herself in the front row. “Imagine if she paid us a visit!” It’s hard to imagine she’d take offence: the show may be ridiculously OTT but its heart is in the right place. Here You Come Again, too, is fond not mocking. “We really followed Dolly’s lead,” says Paoluccio. “She makes fun of herself quite a bit and she does that because she knows who she is. She has a very strong sense of self.”
Both shows embrace the inclusive spirit of singers who have large gay fanbases. Titanique’s director Tye Blue, who co-created the show with Mindelle and Constantine Rousouli, told Drew that they wrote it when Donald Trump first became president. “The world was a very dark place and they wanted some light and to spread a bit of joy.” Now, here Trump comes again. But Paoluccio highlights a line she sings from Parton’s Light of a Clear Blue Morning: “Everything’s gonna be alright, it’s gonna be OK.” That’s what audiences want to hear, she says. “And we all want someone like Dolly to tell us that.”
Titanique is at the Criterion theatre, London, until 8 June. Here You Come Again is on tour until 22 February.
