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| Manik Choksi & The Cast of "Moby Dick" (photo: Evgenia Eliseeva) |
Call one whatever, but who knew? Moby-Dick? Harpooned, yes, but hyphenated too? As it turns out, yes and no; it depends on which edition one's referring to, back when Herman Melville first published his iconic 1851 novel of rage, revenge and reverence, with hyphen in one published version, without it in another. Neither was a success, for the balance of his lifetime, but it would eventually be held up as an integral addition to American literature (in fact declared the greatest American novel ever written by none other than Nathaniel Philbrick). In more recent times, the work has been the source for countless film and operatic versions, and now, at American Repertory Theatre in Cambridge, it's in the creative hands of the folks who brought you Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812. With that provenance one would expect this, with Music, Lyrics, Book and Orchestrations by Dave Malloy, Developed with and Directed by Rachel Chavkin, to be a revelation.
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| The Cast of "Moby Dick" (photo: Evgenia Eliseeva) |
As it turns out, again, yes and no. If broadly written, acted and directed slapstick is your thing, then half of this show would be right up your alley. If not, then it must be said that the good (or bad) ship Pequod is barely afloat, in fact adrift, revealing neither focus nor purpose. Given the source material in the novel, with its vast cornucopia of symbols, themes and metaphors, subtlety surely would be called for, but is sorely lacking in this production. The complexities are there beneath the surface, from the pure whiteness of the titular animal with its forces (nature, God, fate) beyond man's control vs. free will, to the inevitability of evil amid moral ambiguity. You'll find the original author's themes of duty, defiance, doubt and death, along with obsession, the limits of knowledge and the pervasive underbelly of race. It also preserves the narrator's quest, his spiritual journey to discover his own sense of self. A few decades ago, this critic enrolled in a Harvard course on Religion and Literature given by Amos Wilder (brother of Thornton), whose emphasis on this very novel was revelatory. This mashup of theatrically bizarre elements reveals only how even the most renowned creative folks can go so horribly off course. After three and a half hours of sophomoric mayhem one almost ends up cheering on the whale. Not that there isn't a lot of talent on display; it's just diluted by overlong segments involving an anachronistic stand-up comic routine that's well done but overdone, a seemingly endless boat ride that involves audience participation straight out of a ride at Disneyland, and an extended showstopper (in a bad sense) of a deviation dealing with Pip that also seems to go on forever (because it does).
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| The Cast of "Moby Dick" (photo: Evgenia Eliseeva) |
On the plus side, there's a good deal of memorable music in varying styles from jazz to gospel to folk/country to Broadway (and even echoes of whales clicking), all performed by an inexhaustibly energetic cast consisting of Ishmael (Manik Choksi), Queequeg (Andrew Cristi), Starbuck (Starr Busby), Blacksmith/Sailor 1 (Ashkon Davaran), Flask (Anna Ishida), Tashtego (Matt Kizer), Daggoo (J. D. Mollison), Ahab (Tom Nelis), Pip (Morgan Siobhan Green), Stubb (Kalyn West), Fedallah (Eric Berryman), Carpenter/Sailor 2 (Kim Blanck) and Father Mapple/Captains of the Albatross, the Bachelor & the Rachel (Dawn L. Troupe). Standouts include Troupe, Nelis and Choksi, but there's not a clinker in the bunch. As for the rest of the creative team, the complex Musical Direction and Supervision was by Or Matias, with lively Choreography by Chanel Da Silva, overwhelmingly enveloping Scenic Design by Mimi Lien (with reflections of Quaker meeting houses, and a life of violent and broken obsession), eclectic but apt Costume Design by Brenda Abbandandolo, extraordinary Lighting Design by Bradley King, equally important Sound Design by Hidenori Nakajo and clever Puppet Direction by Eric F. Avery. One is tempted to repeat one's own recent reference in another review: Squid pro quo; fortunately, one resisted this temptation.
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| Andrew Cristi & The Cast of "Moby Dick" (photo: Evgenia Eliseeva) |
Would
that the powers behind this theatrical quest had resisted the obvious
lure of including material from 40 of the 135 chapters in the book
(by comparison, their Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812
was based on 70 pages from War and Peace). There are some
captivating choices (clarifying the homoerotic feelings of the
narrator toward his “cannibalistic” bedmate, for example; or the
songs about etymology, cetology and squeezing sperm; or frequent
pulverizing of the fourth wall), and about half of the show would
make a very promising piece of theater. As it now stands, it's
correctly described by Chavkin as “epic messiness”. What this
work cries out for is not a harpoon but scissors; it's such a mash-up
of three and a half hours of random set pieces and performance art
that it threatens to destroy all the good aspects of blubberhood.
Succinctly, the show's playbill cover subtitle says it all: “a
musical reckoning”; if you have the patience and stamina to await
its best moments, there is a lot of wheat amongst the chaff.
Meanwhile,
we are all in the belly of the whale, at least until January 12th.
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