Theatre Review

Production: Moby Dick

Novel By: Herman Melville, Adapted By: Morris Panych

Director: Morris Panych

Principle Actors: David Ferry, Shaun Smyth, W. Joseph Matheson, Marcus Nance

Where: Stratford Festival Of Canada

Venue: Studio Theatre

Run: July 22^nd to October 18^th 2008

Commissioned and premiered at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival.

Reviewed By: Kindah Mardam Bey (Ontario Correspondent – Canada)

What do you make of a play without words? Would you be pleasantly surprised? What if dancing was involved, and classical music, would that help? Well, one of the most anticipated productions of the Stratford Festival Of Canada this year would have to be Moby Dick….without words…but with dancing and a little Debussy. Usually when I go to the theatre and dancing and music take centre stage, I would call that a ballet. Perhaps the Stratford Festival has not been so much progressive with this production as subtly slipped it into another category. Whatever the case, Moby Dick was a delight to watch.

Canadian playwright, Morris Panych, who wrote and directed Hotel Peccadillo seen at the Shaw Festival last season, took the challenge of adapting Moby Dick to stage and directing it in conjunction. I won’t sport with your intelligence and tell you what Moby Dick is about, you will just have to suffer the reading of the mammoth novel, like I did (or Wikipedia the synopsis). Suffice it to say, as our greed turns to environmental destruction, Moby Dick becomes more and more a book of great foresight in mythical proportions. The play had a narrative overlay, with excerpts directly plucked from the novel and spoken over the action at times.

The production starts with “floating men,” as the cast members slowly flow around the stage in a weightless effect that is both surreal and intoxicating; a fabulous illusion. In fact the production has many fabulous displays of illusion and creativity. At one point a row of ladders had three men to each ladder lined up center stage, and as they revolved around a full 360 degrees, raising and lowering their shirts on their backs, the audience easily visualized the billowing of a ship’s sails. Also the sirens/whale (the only females in the play, performed by Kelly Grainger, Alison Jantzie, and Lynda Sing) in their grey, flowing costumes very reminiscent of ballet attire, made an evocative portrayal of the ocean’s lure to the sailors and the whale’s humanity.      

Little details, such as Captain Ahab’s ship wheel having whale teeth on it like a victor’s spokes, or the compass on the floor laden with symbolism, make this production of Moby Dick an intricate story weaved through imagery, motion, and storytelling without words; very compelling. Even though the production only has the narrative voice-over intermittently and none of the actors speak, the story is very easy to follow, and in some cases, such as the demise of a whale they have managed to capture, the performance is perhaps amplified by the lack of words. In fact, some portions of the play were difficult to watch, and after seeing the documentary Sharkwater this year, seeing a gaggle of mischievous men harpooning and eating the flesh of a whale was almost objectionable. Of course, anytime the audience emotes for or against the story, it is a true testament to the production’s worth.

All the classic characters (Captain Ahab , Ishmael, and Queequeg) were fabulously portrayed by David Ferry, Shaun Smyth and Marcus Nance, respectively. Eddie Glen as Flask is a delight to watch, he is a marvellous character actor and brought the same tenacity to this role as he does to The Music Man this year as well.

I must admit that three words are spoke in the production, and after a substantial hiatus of words, the utterance delivers a substantial impact. Moby Dick as a quasi-ballet at this years’ Stratford Shakespeare Festival of Canada is both entertaining and poetic.