Playwright: The Company
At: Building Stage, 412 N. Carpenter
Phone: 312-491-1369; $15-$20
Runs through: Dec. 2
By Jonathan Abarbanel
Director Blake Montgomery explains in the program that this adaptation of Moby-Dick does not pretend to be definitive, but is only one of many possible adaptations of Melville’s complex, epic novel. Many familiar characters, scenes and subplots are completely absent, among them Queequeg, Pip and Father Mapple’s sermon (although Queequeg’s coffin remains a visual device and reminder of the doom that shrouds the Pequod). While still filled with colorful characters and details of whaling life, what emerges in this version is a straightforward and sober narrative focused on the issues of Christian philosophy that are the novel’s raison d’etre.
To remind you: The narrator, Ishmael (never called by name in this staging), ships on a whaling vessel to learn of the world and life at sea. Under monomaniacal Captain Ahab, he gets far more than he bargained for in this cautionary tale of a commander-in-chief who views the universe in terms of absolute good and evil, and claims to talk to God. Moby-Dick is thoroughly American, and the ship—a microcosm of the ship of state—is completely destroyed.
Montgomery and his disciplined ensemble offer both spectacle and intimacy as well as both adventure and reflection in this superior effort, assisted greatly by simple but smart design elements and Kevin O’Donnell’s surprisingly varied mostly percussion score, played live. The stage is long and narrow—like a ship—with the audience seated along either side. Rope and real harpoons suggest the atmosphere at sea, along with a beautiful model whaling ship and miniature longboats. The three men and three women of the cast take turns playing Ahab, Ishmael, Starbuck (the right-thinking first mate), Stubbs and other characters, slipping on and off a coat or hat that identifies each character.
Perhaps best of all, the crew doesn’t cheat Melville’s language. That’s a good trick since Moby-Dick is crammed with an astonishing variety of locutions, from thundering Biblical prophecy to Shakespearian soliloquy to salty slang and sea talk. It’s all here, minus the more boring (although meaningful) essays with which Melville interrupted his narrative. The flavor of the sea is present, too—the back-breaking toil and the dangerous adrenalin-fueled exhilaration of 19th-century whaling—and acted out in ritual movements, striking stage tableaux and just enough narrative to explain a Nantucket sleigh ride or St. Elmo’s Fire.
This Moby-Dick is vigorous, entertaining and self-contained, but at the price of its acknowledged eliminations. It completely ignores the racial, social and—specifically—homosocial themes that recur throughout Melville’s writing, and particularly in this work. Ishmael and Queequeg have, in effect, a marriage that challenges both racism and traditional realities of masculine social dominance, realities that Melville long attempted to escape (at least philosophically, if not in physical fact). But that’s for someone else’s adaptation, not this one.