Herman Melville’s tale of a man’s obsession starts its national tour as far from the sea as possible
It might be one of the most well-known stories we’ve never read, and here’s yet another adaptation of Moby Dick, a story written at the height of the whaling industry in the early years of Queen Victoria’s reign, where slavery was still legal, lights needed whale oil to burn and the fate of a species was secondary to profit and enterprise. An opportunity then for a modern adaptation then, looking at the effect of man’s industry on the environment and the attitudes to human labour?
My 16-year-old, theatre-mad daughter was my plus-one for the press night, a useful sounding block for a seasoned reviewer. Had she heard of Moby Dick? Nope. The famous opening line “Call me Ishmael” as our narrator (a sensitive performance by Mark Arends) relays his story of adventures on a whaling ship? Nope. OK, well this might be an education then.
The set and staging to portray a ship chasing the lure and lucre of whaling is ably tackled by designer Kate Bunce, whose set consists of scaffolding poles which are adapted throughout the performance from a quayside, to an inn, to a ship, particularly clever as the cast move boards to create a two tier ship’s deck and prow. The cast – with talented musicians – sing and play sea shanties to add context and aid the movement of staging. This works to a point – you can’t hear the lyrics very clearly – but when the singing stops as the whalers chase their prey the music, particularly the drumming – adds a heart-racing element to the violence of the action which you never actually see.
If you’re unfamiliar with the story, we join naïve Ishmael as a literal fish-out-of water trying to join a whaling ship to broaden his schoolteacher horizons. There’s a flash of humour in his interactions with soon-to-be shipmate Queequeg, a gentle South Sea island harpooner ‘savage’ played mesmerisingly by Tom Swale.
It takes too long in the first half (40 minutes) to actually get to the boat – the Pequod – where we eventually meet the already mad Captain Ahab (Guy Rhys), whose notoriety has been repeatedly flagged before we see him, appearing on the deck like a one-legged Eric Cantona about to give his ‘seagulls following the trawler’ speech. Ahab’s obsession with finding the albino Moby Dick who bit off his leg in a previous encounter is starkly contrasted by the (sometimes too) softly spoken first-mate Starbuck (Hannah Emanuel), who just wants to pragmatically get as much whale meat and oil from the voyage as possible before returning safely to their families on shore.
Act one ends with a successful catch – a random whale is brutally harpooned and red tickertape and clever lighting illustrate the kill – subsequently the crew haul and dismember the creature for the sum of its parts. Huge barrels of fish bits are lugged around the set (I only just caught the labels on each barrel to signify different types of whale as they were carting them off). Daughter was confused, was that Moby Dick they caught? The second half might be rather redundant if it had been.
Act two sees meetings (or ‘gams’) with other boats – The Rachel with its desperate captain (whose pleas to help find a missing son are rejected by Ahab) – and the Samuel Enderby, whose captain Boomer has also lost a limb to the white whale but who bears it no ill-will, unlike Ahab who continues on his selfish and dangerous quest to find and kill Moby Dick despite the protestations of Starbuck and the clear risk to the crew.
When the Pequod eventually finds the giant whale and the action comes to a crescendo, (spoilers), only Ishmael survives, picked up by the Rachel after floating in a coffin made for Queequeg (which is never really explained but is a clear plotline in the book).
There’s no doubt this is an incredibly skillful company of actors and musicians (the award-winning Simple8) led by Royal & Derngate’s competent and inventive new artistic director Jessie Jones. But adaptor Sebastian Armesto’s script seemed a little uneven in its pacing and the opportunity to connect such a vivid story of man’s destruction of, and by, nature more deeply seems to have been missed. Some of the main themes (faith, loyalty, class) are ignored and characters in the book (notably the slave boy Pip) are missing and those we do see are left underdeveloped. Too many sea shanties and a lack of depth of character made this, for me, miss the boat, but hopefully it will develop and find its (sea) legs during its national tour.
Moby Dick runs at Royal & Derngate until Saturday April 13, then is on tour (including a week in the Isles of Scilly) ending at the Oxford Playhouse on June 22. For tickets visit Royal and Derngate Box office or Simple8 for full tour details.
