Moby Dick: York Theatre Royal
To my shame, I confess to never reading Moby Dick; is it the prospect of 135 chapters that’s a deterrent? But I do have a friend who once staged a marathon reading of Herman Melville’s masterpiece about whaling – and the meaning of life – outside the Maritime Museum in Liverpool and that took two whole days.
So how would Simple8 Theatre manage to compress all of this into less than two hours? And how would they portray a great white sperm whale on stage? But good theatre is all about the suspension of disbelief, and harnessing the imagination, and this production – first staged at the Royal and Derngate in Northampton – scores on both counts.
The all-important set, created by Kate Bunce, takes us on board a ship which seems to be constantly moving as the cast carry boards and planks, haul on the sails, scramble over the scaffolding, and sing sea shanties to create a choreographed world on the ocean wave. And when the singing stops and the drumming continues as the whalers chase their prey, a tension builds towards the violence of the action which we don’t actually see.
And the narrated description of the size and scale of a whale, especially its head, using pieces of “whale bone” has a drama all of its own. For context, it’s fascinating to be reminded that, before the discovery of petroleum, oil from whales literally lit the world. Humans hunted and killed whales almost of the brink of extinction of the species, and this theatre company holds environmental sustainability close to its heart. So now we reach the answer to why this story was brought to the stage at this time, with oceans, seas and rivers increasingly under threat.
Mark Arends is Ishmael, the narrator, a schoolmaster wanting to experience real life by joining a whaling ship. He befriends Queequeg, a South Sea island harpooner played by Tom Swale. There’s perhaps too much time spent philosophising before they reach their ship the Pequod, captained by Ahab, obsessed with revenge on the whale that bit off his leg. He’s played by Guy Rhys and, yes, the leg is real, fashioned from one of Guy’s old prosthetics to resemble Captain Ahab’s whalebone peg leg. The leg previously made an appearance, wrapped in leather, when the actor played a one-legged pirate. Guy, who was born with a leg deformity that led to amputation when he was eight, doesn’t consider himself a disabled actor.
First-mate Starbuck (Hannah Emanuel), has a more pragmatic reason for being on board, to get as much whale meat and oil from the voyage as possible before returning safely. And of course, they don’t, their fate encapsulated in a poignant candle-lit finale.
It’s a fascinating production on many levels, from the spotlight on maritime history, to the aim of Simple8 to create worlds out of nothing, producing innovative, bold plays that tackle big ideas. At a very basic level, a few members of the cast need to project their voices more strongly. It shouldn’t be necessary to make this point, but the drama students in the audience at York demonstrated very poor manners by crinkling crisp and sweet packets throughout the first half. How will YOU feel when you make it on stage, and the audience are distracted from YOUR big moment?
Moby Dick plays at York Theatre Royal until Saturday and then continues touring, to Malvern and then Oxford. Details and tickets: https://www.yorktheatreroyal.co.uk/whats-on/
Stagey Lady 