Why is 'Never Let Go' so good?
The strange appeal of a giddy Titanic reenactment at The Brick Theater
“Oh, okay,” I realized, about five minutes into Michael Kinnan’s Never Let Go at The Brick Theater. “This is just fully a reenactment of the movie Titanic.”
I’m not sure what I expected. It’s printed right there on my playbill: “The original unauthorized one-man theatrical realization of James Cameron’s Titanic, created for lovers, fans, and even skeptics.”
Maybe the show title had misled just a little bit. “I’ll never let go” are Rose’s final words to Jack as she does, indeed, let go, sending his frozen body sinking into the Atlantic. Rose survives by lying on a wooden door following the Titanic’s sinking, and a tiresome corner of the internet loves to point out that, well, perhaps Jack could have fit on that door as well. I went in assuming Never Let Go was playing on this gag, and might be a snarky unpacking of a classic movie that tends to face a good amount of mockery.
Never Let Go isn’t that at all. Kinnan’s show may not be an uncritical love letter to Cameron’s megahit epic, but nor is it cynical satire. Star/producer/creator Kinnan seems to have a genuine love for Titanic, and a sincere fascination with the movie’s enduring cultural legacy. It was a real relief to discover that it’s love and fascination which drives Never Let Go. Why reenact except out of love?
So yeah, Kinnan just does the movie. Well, not all of it—Never Let Go runs an hour, versus the movie’s 3 hours 14 minutes. And the ocean here is a bucket filled with water, versus elaborate CGI. And that railing Rose nearly hurls herself off is a folding chair. But, Rose’s corset is present in full force. In fact, Kinnan never once takes it off.
In picking out what to keep from Cameron’s mammoth screenplay, Kinnan makes some surprising choices. The sinking itself is a fairly quick event, and the modern day scenes are mostly gone, but Rose and Jack’s love story is here almost in full. Rose’s near suicide, the discovery of Jack’s drawings, “paint me like your French girls”—all of it, with dialogue fully intact as Kinnan jumps between characters.
The result is a fresh, surprising reminder that Cameron’s screenplay was driven by basically two things: a burning contempt for the rich, and insatiable horniness. That’s where Kinnan’s writhing, energetic performance lives. First, fuck the rich; then, let’s fuck; and finally, oh, fuck. These might not be the scenes you recall most closely from Titanic, but I found every line of dialogue coming right back, including gems like: “I’d rather be his whore than your wife.”
As for the finale, when Kinnan finally arrives at “My Heart Will Go On,” well, forget it. My audience at The Brick (The Brick!) was on its feet and singing along like a bunch of drunk tourists at Tina. That song—the world’s best-selling single of 1998 and completely inescapable at the time—has lost none of its power.
How to account for Titanic? It’s a strange thing. The movie is not exactly good. Yet it’s also a masterpiece, a colossal achievement still unparalleled in modern cinema. Kinnan gets that both things can be true at once, though even he occasionally seemed taken aback by the audience’s delighted response.
Most striking to me was the shared, expectant laugh at Old Rose’s “ah!” upon dropping the Heart of the Ocean into the water. I’ve always thought that was a strange little bit of delivery from Gloria Stuart. Apparently I wasn’t alone.
Nostalgia is overdone right now. We desperately need to focus on creating new things. But with Never Let Go, Kinnan comments on our ever-growing need for nostalgia candy while also gleefully supplying that very sweetness. At some point, we might have to let go, but not yet.