Titanique star Marla Mindelle drew a fierce online reaction on Sunday, 7 June 2026, after the Celine Dion musical took the stage at the Tony Awards at Radio City Music Hall in New York and delivered a performance that many viewers said did not land.
The criticism followed a broadcast set built around Mindelle and the show's Broadway cast, and it quickly became the part of the night that people were talking about for all the wrong reasons.
The news came after Titanique arrived at the ceremony with four nominations, including Best Musical, Best Book, Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role in a Musical for Mindelle and Best Performance by an Actor in a Featured Role in a Musical for Layton Williams.
The show itself is a camp reimagining of James Cameron's 1997 film, told from Celine Dion's point of view, and it has never exactly traded in restraint. That is part of the joke. The problem, at least for the viewers posting in real time, was that the Tony Awards audience did not seem to be laughing.
When Camp Crosses The Line
The cast performed a medley of two songs, I'm Alive and My Heart Will Go On, in front of the live broadcast audience. For the first number, Mindelle was joined by other cast members, including Frankie Grande and Jim Parsons in drag, before taking on a solo section built around the song that closed out the film's credits. On paper, it was the kind of number that should have been impossible to miss.
In practice, many people watching from home said it was hard to sit through.
A stream of comments on X focused on Mindelle's vocals in particular. One viewer wrote that the performance was 'horrible' and asked whether it was real. Another wondered whether the vocals were supposed to be bad, while someone else suggested the whole thing might have been part of the bit.
A different post described the singing as off-key and said the delivery sounded wrong. None of that settles the central question, of course. It does, however, show how quickly a live number can turn from showcase to spectacle.
There was also a split between viewers who were seeing Titanique for the first time and those who already knew the show. One person who had seen the production live said the Tony Awards performance was not representative of their experience on Broadway, adding that Mindelle had been phenomenal in the theatre.
Another, by contrast, said the broadcast segment was worse than sitting through the musical itself and joked that they were still waiting for a refund. That is probably the most brutal kind of theatre review there is, because it arrives with no critic in sight and no filter to soften the blow.
The Aftermath Of An Awards Season
What can be confirmed is the backlash itself, not the intention behind it. Titanique is built on parody and exaggeration, which makes it easy for a live television audience to miss the point or assume the bit has simply gone too far. Sometimes those are the same thing.
The line between intentional excess and a performance that has drifted out of control can look very thin from a couch, especially when the audience is armed with a phone and a keyboard.
The Tony Awards were not short of musical polish on the night. According to a Daily Express US source, Titanique was one of several productions to perform during the ceremony, but it was the one that drew the sharpest online reaction. That is not the same as saying the performance defined the evening. It did, though, define one corner of it very effectively.
The musical itself also left New York without a win. Titanique lost out to Schmigadoon! for Best Musical, while Caissie Levy took Best Actress, Ali Louis Bourzgui of The Lost Boys won Actor in a Featured Role and Cinco Paul of Schmigadoon! picked up Best Book.
Mindelle's nomination placed her among a competitive field that also included Sara Chase from Schmigadoon!, Levy for Ragtime and Christiani Pitts for Two Strangers (Carry a Cake Across New York).
There was no official response from Mindelle or the show's team, and nothing in the text confirms whether the Tony Awards performance was meant to play as intentionally rough or simply came off that way under the lights.
For now, what remains is the awkward arithmetic of live television: a large stage, a famous song, and an internet that decided almost immediately that something had gone badly off script.
