Line #51 TearJerker/Titanic

Context TearJerker / Titanic

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1	This is a musical about one of the most well-known maritime tragedies, making tear-jerkers inevitable.
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4	* The tears may start flowing as early as ''the opening number'', if you've already seen the show, the movie, or know of the real events. The hope of it all, the sheer scale of the ship, the characters talking in adoration about how Titanic is the Ship of Dreams, unaware that she would take them to such a heartrending place of ruin instead of towards beautiful new lives in the New World.
5	* The various scenes of passengers saying goodbye and white-lying to each other about meeting again. The libretto is vague on how to stage the crowd, so takes on this may vary from production to production, from actor to actor. Many productions add background and foreground characters being dragged apart screaming and crying (Caroline Neville and Alice Beane, for example), some after running back to give their loved one the last hug or kiss (Jack Thayer, for example). On Broadway, Kate [=McGowan=] has to be yanked away, lifted off her feet, and bodily thrown into a lifeboat to separate her from Jim Farrell as she screams.
6	* At least one production's Wallace Hartley has his bow hand visibly tremble as he continues trying to calm the passengers with his violin even as everything descends into chaos around him. The music still doesn't waver at all. (Out of universe, this is because Hartley's actor isn't playing the violin himself, but Hartley and the Titanic band's brave decision to remain with the ship is commendable regardless.)
7	* "Still", Isidor and Ida Straus' FinalLoveDuet to reaffirm their love and devotion to each other, ends with Isidor smashing his champagne glass underfoot - essentially re-enacting their marriage ceremony. In the proshot, they exchange rings again, to the same effect.
8	* Even as the ship sinks, Andrews frantically looks over the plans for Titanic and brainstorms how to save it (or, rather, how the ship could have been built better). Once he is startled out of this reverie by the bellboy, he narrates a vision of their immediate future that is both tearjerking and prime nightmare fuel: unbridled chaos, doom, and death, as class and morals will cease to matter in the struggle for life.
9	** The 2023 theatrically released live capture of the musical (streaming on [=BroadwayHD=]) features a scene where the ghost of Andrews looks solemnly upon the drowned spirits of the Titanic, including the fallen sailors and the waltzing Straus.
10	* The shell-shocked survivors on the Carpathia musing about what happened and what could have been.
11	** One of the hardest parts in this scene is when the death of the bellboys is mentioned. All fifty bellboys are dead, apparently 'without a whimper', and the eldest of the bunch was only fifteen years old. In some productions, this is told to the audience by the butler, who got lucky and survived, and thus is left to lament the dead boys, whom he probably worked with.

Context TearJerker / Titanic