Imagination guides this voyage
It’s a tale with the most iconic opening line of all time, and a man- versus- nature theme that has captured imaginations since 1851.
As I observed in the Montreal Gazette last fall when writing about Théâtre du Nouveau Monde’s epic production of Moby Dick, adapting Herman Melville’s South Seas adventure for the stage is a challenge on the scale of hunting an angry albino sperm whale.
It’s a sprawling story, committed to a 700- page book, and has the added burden of being one of the great American novels.
Persephone Productions, a company that provides opportunities for young and recently graduated performers, takes on the challenge headfirst with a five- person “crew” in an adaptation by Montreal Gazette theatre columnist Jim Burke.
Meet Ishmael, a young man
seeking adventure and travel via a whaling ship in the 1820s. Newly arrived in Nantucket, he finds a friend in Polynesian harpooner Queequeg. They choose to tie their fortunes to the whaling ship Pequod. Its captain is Ahab, a man with a peg leg and a bitter desire to hunt down Moby Dick, the whale who chewed off his leg.
Melville’s novel was inspired by his own days as a sailor, as well as the incredible story of the Essex. The whaling ship was sunk in 1820 when a huge sperm whale rammed it; one of the few survivors, first mate Owen Chase, wrote a harrowing account of what happened next. ( His story in turn was the inspiration for the 2015 Chris Hemsworth movie In the Heart of the Sea.)
Director Alex Goldrich’s production is buoyed by a strong cast, with the performers playing multiple characters. Anne- Marie Saheb ably leads the group as an inquisitive Ishmael. Alex Petrachuk — who plays vulnerable deckhand Pip, among others — owns her characters’ monologues with her expressive face and smooth movement.
Martin Law was stiff and lacking emotion as Ahab, but Chris Hicks ( Queequeg and second mate Stubb) and Nils SvenssonCarell ( Flask) do a fine job rounding out the rest of the characters.
Some of the finest moments happen when the whole cast is engaged: the crew examining
the slippery insides of a downed whale; the harpooning sequence set in a tiny boat made of boxes; Ahab being held aloft by his crew as he makes a desperate stand.
Burke wrote his adaptation about 15 years ago in his native England for a production set on an actual boat, the Fitzcarraldo. He has preserved small, imaginative gems from Melville’s prose, peppering them throughout the script: Moby Dick is a “gliding great demon of the sea” and a “snow hill in the air.” The Pequod is a “thing of trophies, a cannibal of a craft.”
There are also references to Melville’s chapters chronicling the minutiae of whaling and sea life, but I wish more time had been devoted to the human
relationships: the bromance between Queequeg and Ishmael, and the headstrong disagreement between Ahab and pious chief mate Starbuck.
Whereas Théâtre du Nouveau Monde’s version of Moby Dick had an abundance of bells and whistles ( acrobatics, gallons of water, a whirring boat), Persephone’s bare- bones show uses imagination and heart to tell this evergreen story. The cast is clothed in standard shades of brown, grey and black, with accents of deep red. The lighting and sound design are spare for most of the production, leaving the performers to create the atmosphere, in part through rhythmic drumming.