Can anyone explain the story of Titanic the Musical?

The ship takes it maiden voyage....it sails along smoothly.....goes too fast.....lookout spots an iceberg....they try to turn, but ship collides with said iceberg....couple of hours later, the ship sinks. It's better than the history books, because Maury Yeston wrote the music. For more details, read other posts in this forum. I've described the show in more depth several other times.

TITANIC begins (Prologue) as Thomas Andrews, the architect of the great ship, pores over the blueprints of his design (In Every Age). The curtain then rises to reveal the Ocean Dock in Southampton, England, where people are gathering to wonder at and to board the ship on sailing day: first a stoker (How Did They Build Titanic?), then additional crewmen (There She Is), officers and stevedores (Loading Inventory), the owner, the architect and the captain (The Largest Moving Object), the Third and Second Class passengers (I Must Get On That Ship), and finally the First Class Passengers (The 1st Class Roster). Now, fully boarded, the ship pulls out as the company sings a prayerful farewell (Godspeed Titanic).
One by one, the dreams and aspiration of key characters are presented: Barrett, the stoker who wanted to get away from the coal mines (Barrett's song); Murdoch, the ship's officer contemplating the responsibility of command (To Be a Captain); Kate McGowan and the Third Class passengers who yearn for a better life in America (Lady's Maid); Chief Steward Etches and the millionaires he serves who exult in the wonders of their world (What a Remarkable Age This Is!).

Barrett finds his way to the Telegraph Room where he dictates a proposal of marriage to his sweetheart back home (The Proposal) in a telegram transmitted by Harold Bride, a young telegraph operator smitten with the possibilities of the new radio technology (The Night Was Alive).

The next day, April 14, after Sunday morning church service, the First Class attends the shipboard band's spirited out-of-doors- concert (Hymn/Doing the Latest Rag), an exclusive event crashed by Second Class passenger Alice Beane, a hardware store owner's wife who wants more out of life (I Have Danced). That evening, as Fleet the lookout scans the horizon (No Moon) and bandsman Hartley regales the First Class Smoking Room with a new song (Autumn), the ship sails inexorably towards her collision, which ends Act One.

Act Two opens as the suddenly awakened First and Second Class passengers are assembled in the Grand Salon (Dressed in Your Pyjamas in the Grand Salon) for life-belt instruction by Chief Steward Etches, before being sent up to the Boat Deck to board the lifeboats. In the Telegraph Room, Captain Smith, Mr. Andrews and Mr. Ismay, the owner, argue over who is responsible for the disaster (The Blame) while Mr. Bride tirelessly sends out the S.O.S. Up on the Boat Deck, the male passengers are separated from their families (To the Lifeboats), and all express hopes of being reunited (We'll Meet Tomorrow) as the final boat is lowered. Isidor Straus (the owner of Macy's) and his wife Ida remain behind together, as she refuses to leave his side after 40 years of marriage (Still) and Mr. Etches utters a prayer (To Be a Captain (Reprise)). In the abandoned Smoking Room, Thomas Andrews desperately redesigns his ship to correct its fatal flaws, until the futility of his actions leads him t! o predict, in horrifying detail, the end of Titanic just as she begins her now-inevitable descent (Mr. Andrews' Vision).

In an Epilogue, the survivors picked up by the Carpathia numbly retell what had once been Mr. Andrews' dream (In Every Age (Reprise)). The living are joined by their lost loved-ones in a tableau recapturing the optimistic spirit of the Ocean Dock on sailing day (Finale).

did you copy that out of liner notes or a book or something? Or did you do all that from memory? If from memory...good job!!! Wait, you must have copied that out of the CD, because that's the only place that Lady's Maid comes before Remarkable Age. It's all backwards. It really goes Remarkable Age, Dining Scene (in 3 parts), To Be a Captain, and then Lady's Maid. And at the beginning of Act II, there's "Wake Up, Wake Up" before PJs (as we called it), but we didn't do that song (it's kinda lame) except for the stewards sung announcements. "Third Class Passengers, fore and abaft of the well deck. Please bring your life preservers and await further instructions, etc...) Also, Etches sings the reprise of To Be a Captain at the end of the porthole scenes. Great scenes!!!! The men still on board discuss their fates, etc. And this happens before Still.

But good synopsis!!!!

Big boat meets iceberg.

They kiss passionately; big boat sinks under the waters.

ANy more?

the iceberg gave the boat quite the smooch on the cheek then. It ripped the side off!! isn't that like kissing Freddy Krueger or something?

Think: "titanic" and you've got the idea:-D

Seems a kind of cool show to me

Not just kind of. IT'S AN INCREDIBLY COOL SHOW!!!!!!!!! I would be in the show again in a SECOND!!!!!

aww too bad, there's no jack or rose...lol

It doesn't need a Jack or a Rose. I think that a Jack and Rose would spoil it, to be honest. This musical isn't about a love affair that just happened to hapen in April 1912 on board the biggest maritime disaster ever to set sail. It is ABOUT biggest maritime disaster ever to set sail, which is what makes the musical truer to its title.

There appears to be quite a bit of debate here (as well as other, history-oriented discussions): the best way to tell about a massive event. There's the Jack-and-Rose option, which worked rather nicely; we were able to see these characters, understand them, see what effect this disater had on them. People seem to forget that it wasn't all Jack and Rose, we did get glimpses of other people (I personally felt more for the mother in Third Class who was tucking her children in during the sinking than I ever did for Jack and/or Rose). But for the majority, the option demands our attention focussed on several key players.
And then there's the second option, which doesn't have a cute, hyphenated name. This one tells a much broader story, but with less depth. We learn about more people, their stories, who they were. And this one is more historically accurate, generally, as when you tell about many people, you are able to make the story fits the facts. When you read historical accounts of the sinking (as I have, exhautively), they are mostly told in the large ensemble way. Yes, a lot of focus is often placed on Captain Smith and J. Bruce Ismay, and several of the more influential passengers. You get more stories, but less of a chance to become very invested in them. I believe this option takes much greater storytelling; rather than having 3 hours to tell me why I should care about someone dying, you have, say 10 minutes, or maybe even only one song.
Both forms of story-telling have pros and cons, and I'm sure you could devote numerous essays to the topic, but the important thing is that the story is told. That history is kept alive and remembered.