“The bottom-line moral of the story is you don’t give up,” Vicki Van Tassel, the Colorado-born cruise director of Viking Jupiter tells me while we sail under Norway’s midnight sun.
A phenomenon that occurs in the Arctic Circle where the sun doesn’t set for around 60 days, the ship is on a 15-day tour that started in Greenwich, London, and will end in Bergen.
Van Tassel has been describing her show Ship Happens to me, which she wrote and performed herself a few nights earlier on board Viking Cruises’ newest luxury ocean ship.
Having embarked afterwards, I didn’t catch her act, but I heard many passengers raving about it.
Traditionally, cruise-ship comedy was considered a bit of a joke, but today, as destinations in themselves, they offer high-level entertainment and Broadway-calibre shows.
Having always been a male-dominated industry, on land and at sea, Van Tassel’s Ship Happens is making waves on Viking Jupiter as more women globally are commanding the comedic spotlight.
Ship Happens unravels her life trying to make it on Broadway. “But everyone can relate to it,” she says. “From sibling rivalry to the struggles involved in succeeding – and it’s very self-deprecating.”
Van Tassel grew up on a farm with four brothers and two sisters. Her mother was a frustrated opera singer living vicariously through her children. “She never thought of me as being the entertainer – her singing was classical, not the belty, Broadway stuff – one of my sisters has an amazing voice though, and sings like Julie Andrews,” she says.
“Mum called me her dancer, but I really wasn’t. I could tap, but my brother Fred could out tap me, so whatever I did, I didn’t think it would be anything special.”
Yet Van Tassel went on to become a successful performer and enjoyed the highs and lows of musical theatre for over a decade before following her heart into stand-up comedy. “I just didn’t think there was enough rejection in musical theatre,” she jokes.
Performing at local comedy clubs in New York meant she was often working with the best names in the industry. “Jerry Seinfeld would do five minutes to work his material, Judah Friedlander would come in from the sitcom 30 Rock, and stand-up Jim Gaffigan, so I got experience with the pros,” she says.
The variety and unique nature of her experience is what enables her to now manage a complex on-board cultural enrichment programme for Viking Jupiter’s 930 passengers. The team includes guest lecturers as well as resident historians and musicians: the band, which plays in nightclub Torshavn; four versatile singers (one night they perform the songs from Les Misérables to rambunctious applause, the next they’re belting out Beatles hits); a classical duo (bass and violin); and a pianist, who delights on the grand piano.
Van Tassel is still learning though, and for the first time in her life she is presenting on Viking Cruises’ TV channel, viewable in every stateroom. The variety of TV programming is part of the high-quality digital platform which runs across the ocean fleet, and includes the Viking Voyager app, where guests can indulge in more entertainment, from a guided audio art tour onboard to reserving a seat at a Planetarium show.
Originally Van Tassel wrote Ship Happens during a world cruise with Silversea, where she worked as a cruise director, with the aim of connecting better with guests through sharing her story. If the reaction on Viking Jupiter is anything to go by, the audience welcome this endearing fusion of biopic, musical theatre and humour.
After gigging at comedy clubs, Van Tassel and her husband realised they needed to pay off some debt, so she returned to the stage and got an initial six-month contract with Mamma Mia! in Las Vegas. It was a success and ran for three years, but during this time she had to travel regularly to Seattle to take care of her mother who had aggressive breast cancer.
Sadly, her marriage didn’t survive the distance, then her mother passed away, so when Mamma Mia! ended five months later she was ready to travel and try something new, so she joined the cruise industry.
Now she’s happy and settled at Viking Cruises, she is thinking about creating a show called Holy Ship about her three brothers who became pastors.
She recounts how one of her sisters moved to a farm and became a wedding singer, but her tap-dancing brother Fred made it on Broadway, and, when he isn’t acting, does hair and make-up for the multi-award-winning musical Hamilton.
“As hurtful as experiences can be, you want them because when you succeed there is no higher high,” she stresses. “I deserve this. I worked for it, and I feel that way about being a cruise director. I’ve earned my stripes here.”
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