If you’ve ever longed for Titanic-related stand-up, Alice Fishbein’s show is for you! As the lights dim and Celine Dion’s infamous ‘My Heart Will Go On’ plays over the speakers, a voice comes overhead announcing that in this rendition of James Cameron’s 1997 blockbuster she will be playing the part of ‘Rose, Jack, the ship, captain’ and so on, proceeding to list each character in the movie including, comedically, the boat, ocean, and iceberg.
Leo Still Dies In The End feels like an ironic subversion of the concept of the one-woman show. Spinning a wheel to select the scene she re-enacts, Fishbein comments almost on the ridiculousness of the act of playing out an Oscar winning movie as a singular person. She pokes fun at her pair of goggles and blue sheet imitating water in comparison to the movie’s 200 million dollar budget, while simultaneously ironically commenting on the fact that her rendition is better both in it being three times shorter and far funnier than the original.
And it works; it’s charming and relatable and appeals to lovers of the movie (“Leo wanted out of that relationship” she responds to an audience member heckling about the infamous door discourse) and to haters (“it’s at this point James Cameron remembers he’s making a movie!”). To those who have never seen it, she reminds them that this is, in fact, the entire point of her performance.
At the same time it holds a sense of earnestness lacking from the general concept of the played-out solo performance, as within the performance’s irony there is a deeper sense of love that comes with being able to stage a three hour long film solo (“when in one of my Titanic phases I tend to watch the movie every day for weeks or even months” she quips).
In recounting her personal history with the film, she makes a wider comment on the film’s influence on both the cultural sphere and within her own life alike. As a result, the show has an undeniable sense of enthusiasm and sweetness. It stands to the true testament that if you love a piece of media enough, you can indeed make a Fringe show about it!
Image courtesy of Caeli Smith, provided to The Student as press material