Royal & Derngate Theatre, Northampton – until Saturday 13th April then touring
Review by Amanda Allen
4****
Everyone knows Herman Melville’s 1851 story of Moby Dick, it’s been portrayed in the theatre numerous times, in many ways. This ambitious production by Simple8, adaptation by Sebastian Armesto and directed by Jesse Jones, is another telling of a simple story. The stage was set with us meeting the teacher, Ishmael, played by Mark Arends. He told us of his desire to explore the world and travel to sea. Ishmael was played with great effect and emotional depth; it was not hard to like him and at the same time feel a bit sorry for him whilst still appreciating his quiet intelligence.
At times the accents of the characters slipped, and you had to really concentrate to ensure you knew who they were meant to be, the spoken sound in general was a little quiet and I found I missed some of the narrative. Although the musical sound was loud enough the spoken word would have benefitted with a little more amplification.
The staging was interestingly done, sparse, but still a little chaotic. The use of scaffolding, planks of wood, tree trunks and fabric was excellent all working together to evoke a scene of seafaring and in particular Whaling from long ago. It was surprising how a few bits of metal, fabric and timber can be transformed with some clever lighting effects, before your eyes. Changing from a quayside to an inn, to a boat at harbour and a ship at sea.
Captain Ahab was brilliantly played by Guy Rhys, with just the right amount of fear and madness in his character. Although we all know he will lose his fight with the whale, Moby Dick, I almost hoped he would get away with it this time! The whale was brilliantly described by Ishmael, you could tell he was a teacher, he interestingly demonstrated the Whale with the ensemble using bone type outlines to animate him.
For me, Queequeg, played by Tom Swale, gave the outstanding performance. Quietly confident and obviously different to the other sailors, he evoked that air of mystery amongst the ships company, I was left wanting to know more about his life before he joined the ship.
The trend of having the musicians as part of the cast, on stage throughout the performance, worked well in this adaptation of the story. With the atmosphere of long ago sea faring evoked by the many sea shanty type tunes. I did feel that in some places the songs were padding out the show a little, a couple of the numbers didn’t seem to fit with the story line, and I felt that they were there simply to make the production longer.
At times I felt that the staging was a little too busy to appreciate the story unfolding, the actors must have been exhausted after the performance with so much climbing round, under, over and on to the various parts of the ship. But in all a very enjoyable telling of an age old tale of the struggle between man and his exploitation of the natural world