TITANIQUE'S TANGLED SCANDAL
Losses off-Broadway are the tip of the iceberg.
EXCLUSIVE: Before Titanique opened last month at the St. James Theatre, the campy musical ran downtown for three years — an improbable juggernaut that contributed to off-Broadway’s comeback.
It was also, according to its own producer, the scene of a fraud.
In a lawsuit filed in Chesterfield County Circuit Court in Virginia, the off-Broadway production accused its former general manager of doctoring financial statements and diverting funds.
On March 13, the off-Broadway production secured a $4.3 million civil judgment against the general manager, Carl Flanigan. Because Flanigan didn't respond to the case — or, for that matter, to my calls, texts and emails — the court entered the judgment by default. In its damages claim, the production listed $2.8 million of unauthorized loans connected to Titanique and other shows.
The imbroglio is a costly distraction for Eva Price, the busy chief executive of Maximum Entertainment Productions (MEP) and Titanique’s lead producer on and off-Broadway and in London. A year ago, it won two Olivier Awards, including for best new entertainment or comedy play.
On May 5, Titanique received four Tony Award nominations, including for Best Musical. A day earlier, Liberation, which Price produced with Daryl Roth, won the 2026 Pulitzer Prize for drama. Price is executive producer of the musical & Juliet on Broadway and on tour. She’s also raising up to $25 million for the musical Take the Lead, which she’s developing with Diane Nabatoff, who produced the film of the same name, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing.
Satirizing the 1997 movie Titanic, with a character named Celine Dion as its heroine, Titanique ran at the Daryl Roth Theatre near Union Square for most of its off-Broadway marathon. (Roth declined to comment for this story.) Despite an abundance of fans, it was in the red. In 2024 alone, the production lost $2.3 million, according to a September 2025 filing with New York State prepared by the accounting firm Withum.
Typically, a producer would close a show hemorrhaging money. Titanique remained open through 2024, and it returned $338,000 to investors that year, even as it was losing millions, per the state filing. Flanigan “made multiple false representations” to Price about Titanique’s finances, according to the suit.
In an email to Price and to a spokeswoman for the show, I asked whether the producer was contacted by the U.S. Attorney’s office in the Southern District of New York — the court files include a reference to “SDNY” — and whether she’d been aware of the 2024 shortfall, among other questions.
“Carl Flanigan’s unlawful actions were not known to the producer during 2024,” the production spokeswoman wrote to Broadway Journal. “He was terminated in the Spring of 2025 promptly after he confessed to having secretly diverted funds and falsified documents. The producer notified investors of the matter; corrected affected financial statements; and reported Flanigan’s actions to law enforcement at the US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York. Per law enforcement’s request to maintain the confidentiality of their investigation, we have no further comment.”
A spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York declined multiple requests for comment.
Price, a former ABC News journalist, co-founded MEP in 2005. Flanigan, who’d worked as a producer for the performance-art troupe Blue Man Group, joined MEP in 2016. As MEP’s managing director and Titanique’s general manager, he was responsible for the show’s budgeting and for supervising its operations and finances.
The three-way litigation in Virginia involves Flanigan; Iceberg Ahead LLC, the company led by MEP that presented Titanique off-Broadway; and Kapitus Servicing Inc., an Arlington, Virginia, financial services company that filed the first suit.
In early 2025, Titanique’s bookkeeper noticed that PDF bank statements that Flanigan provided were altered, according to Iceberg Ahead’s suit against him. “The bookkeeper obtained original copies of those bank statements, which revealed discrepancies between Flanigan’s documents and reports about the state of Iceberg’s finances,” the suit said.
The general manager had already been put on leave for “financial impropriety concerning other productions,” Iceberg Ahead’s suit alleged. MEP fired him on April 4, 2025. A week later, Kapitus contacted Price about a loan she said she was unaware of.
In the loan agreement filed as evidence in court, Flanigan described himself as Iceberg Ahead’s “owner” and borrowed $195,000 against Titanique’s future earnings. Flanigan transferred the loan proceeds to “unrelated third parties” and doctored the bank statements “as part of a successful effort to conceal the Kapitus transaction” from Price, Iceberg Ahead claimed in court papers.
The loan terms were exorbitant. Flanigan agreed to pay back $278,000 — $5,351 every week for a year. That amounts to an annual percentage rate exceeding 70% when accounting for the repayment schedule.
Flanigan made one weekly payment; two others didn’t clear, according to Kapitus’ suit against him and Iceberg Ahead. On March 26, 2026, Kapitus obtained a “partial final judgment” against Flanigan of $345,000, which includes attorney’s fees but excludes interest. Iceberg Ahead also sued Flanigan, initially seeking about $825,000 and alleging fraud involving the Kapitus transaction. The case later expanded to include the other loans. Flanigan didn’t respond in court to either complaint.
Iceberg Ahead accused Kapitus of shoddy due diligence and filed Titanique’s off-Broadway operating agreement as evidence in court. The operating agreement omits Flanigan’s name entirely, undercutting his claim that he was the “owner” of the show. A lawyer representing Kapitus declined to comment for this story.
Maximum Entertainment Productions incurred hundreds of thousands of dollars in fees dealing with the matter. Beginning in mid-March 2025, Susan Mindell, a partner with the law firm Levine Plotkin, which represents MEP, worked on “Carl F. matters” almost every day, according to heavily redacted billing records filed in court.
Mindell’s calls and emails — to Price, Withum, forensic accountants and a white-collar defense lawyer advising the production — concerned “termination provisions” for Flanigan, investor communications, issues in recovering liability insurance funds and “new Carl F. evidence.” The billing records don’t go into detail.
The court records don’t specify whether the $2.8 million of unauthorized loans were from Titanique off-Broadway to other shows, or vice versa. The amounts were substantial. A musical Price is developing based on the Amazon Prime Video series Transparent lent or received $57,000; Redwood, the short-lived Idina Menzel vehicle on Broadway that Flanigan also general-managed, lent or received $230,000; Iceberg Ahead Investment Ltd., which is behind the West End Titanique ($115,000); and Maximum Entertainment Productions itself ($1.4 million).
Iceberg Ahead included in its damages claim $606,000 in unpaid music rights invoices and “return of capital” of $577,000. That $577,000 is what Titanique’s off-Broadway investors recouped — about 60 percent of its initial capitalization, according to the state filing. Referring to investor distributions as damages reinforces the idea that Titanique’s results were initially inflated and early operating profits were phantom.
The court papers don’t include any references to Kooky Krazy Broadway LLC, the production company presenting Titanique at the St. James. Last week, it grossed $853,000, up 17 percent from a week earlier. Titanique’s pre-production estimates for operating costs were about $1 million a week, which would mean, if accurate, that the show continues to run at a loss (like many productions on Broadway today).
The curtain comes down on the 2025-26 Broadway season later this month. Titanique’s legal saga may still be in previews.
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