There was about a year where it was not very fun to be Melissa Barrera. After describing Israel’s actions in Gaza as genocide and ethnic cleansing, she was fired from her leading role in the Scream franchise. She later said she barely got any offers for nearly a year, and the ones she did get were along the lines of “Oh, she probably doesn’t have work, she’ll say yes to anything.” Barrera’s career has rebounded a bit with roles in the movie Abigail and the series The Copenhagen Test. But Titanique, a musical that spent years off-Broadway before making the leap this month, feels like exactly the place Barrera should be right now.
Titanique, a Titanic parody as narrated by Celine Dion, is a very silly show. Dion, played by co-writer Marla Mindelle, insists that she was there, not just in James Cameron’s movie, but on the doomed “unsinkable” ship. This version of Dion is a kook and an egomaniac, narrating the show with her own pop songs and offering her assessment of the characters, who are also very silly in manner and in casting. Jim Parsons plays Mrs. Bukater, Rose’s mother; ’90s R&B star Deborah Cox is here as the Unsinkable Molly Brown; Frankie Grande, the Big Brother alum and brother to Ariana, is here playing Victor Garber. Titanique is a very broad pop culture fantasia that lands somewhere between an episode of Drag Race and a Scary Movie.
Barrera stars as Rose and is the closest thing to a straight man that exists in Titanique (double entendre intended). She mediates the egos of her mother and of Dion, of Jack (co-writer Constantine Rousouli) and Cal (John Riddle). As in the film, Rose faces a conflict between true lust and societal expectation. Of course, none of this is taken very seriously leaving Barrera to react to the other characters’ zaniness and to attempt to ground the production in something resembling human behavior.
The pièce de résistance of this element comes fairly early, in the scene when Rose is threatening to jump off of the ship. Describing the freezing ocean water as “a thousand knives stabbing you all over your body,” Jack’s voice becomes Roger L. Jackson’s Ghostface, taunting, “Do you wanna die, Sydney?” until Rose yells, “Okay, I get it!” In a packed show, it’s a brief moment, but a poignant one. The show is somewhat improvised and features jokes tailored to its performers. (Parsons gets a decent Big Bang Theory line later; Cox riffs on “Nobody’s Supposed To Be Here”.) In that moment, the show gives Barrera the opportunity to take a painful, disappointing experience and reclaim it and mock it.
That’s not to say that Barrera only gets to react to her castmates; she also gets to be plenty silly too. The paint-me-like-one-of-your-French-girls scene, set to “Because You Loved Me,” is a riot in large part because of her commitment to it. There are, obviously, some gags involving necklaces and doors. Anyone who’s seen the In The Heights film adaptation knows that Barrera has musical theater chops, but Titanique gives her space to flex her comic muscles that her biggest film roles really haven’t.
Titanique probably won’t be a defining role in Barrera’s career, nor is it the kind of role that’s likely to be an award magnet. What it is is a reset, and a great one. Barrera gets to emerge triumphant and anew from a controversy that could have ended a career. Her range is wider now than it was then. If Hollywood decides to stop calling, Barrera will be perfectly fine on stage.
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