"Moby Dick". Oxford Playhouse

This review appeared originally on The Reviews Hub.

For a swashbuckling tale of bloodthirsty adventure on the high seas, there is something muted, almost cerebral, about this production. Forget the classic image of Captain Ahab’s lifeless corpse, festooned in his own ropes and lashed to the flanks of his nemesis. In Simple8’s production, Moby-Dick is but a whale of the mind, proceeding from Ahab’s vengeance-oppressed brain. Moments of intense violence are hinted at, but replaced by blackouts. Pain, exhaustion and suffering are expressed not through sweat, toil and action, but through the lyrics of an almost constant soundtrack of old sea-shanties, gently bewailing the losses and privations of a life at sea. Instead of howling winds and creaking boards, there’s a lone violin making scratchy sounds. Muted is fine. But is it effective?

Partly.

Herman Melville’s massive fish tale – the book is about the size of a baby whale itself – has never lost its power to thrill. Like Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, published only a decade earlier, it gave the public a morally ambiguous monster to act as a mirror for human frailty. The line that leaps out from the original novel, repeated more than once in Sebastian Armesto’s intelligent adaptation, is: ‘Ahab beware Ahab!’ In 1834 the white whale may have been a symbol of man overreaching himself, but now the same words hit home as a reminder of environmental despoliation: the play gives us society on a ship sailing to its own destruction. And the sheer, gory glory of killing all those whales so we could have expensive soap and candles now seems like the first step of the Industrial Revolution towards the global catastrophe we now all face, on the Pequod of modern life.

Designer Kate Bunce’s staging is all boards, poles and ropes, moved ingeniously into different configurations by the cast to create harbourside inns, ship decks, bridges and whaling dinghies. In fact the scene-changes, accompanied by the ever-present sea-shanties, are some of the most powerful parts of the show, where it flexes its creative stagecraft muscles.

But it does seem to take forever to get to the ship. In fact almost the entire first half is taken up with narrator/protagonist/schoolteacher Ishmael (Mark Arends) hanging around in pubs and being warned about Captain Ahab. Pacing is an issue throughout. Since the production avoids scenes of action (this must be the only adaptation of Moby Dick not to include a single harpoon) it relies heavily on scenes of philosophical debate, largely between the softly-spoken (and unconvincingly American) first mate Starbuck (Hannah Emmanuel), who just wants to kill some whales and get home in one piece, and the one-legged Ahab (Guy Rhys), who comes across as more of a brooder than a madman. When he whips up his men to shout ‘Death to Moby-Dick!’ it doesn’t seem that unreasonable an idea.

Given the didactic approach of this production, it’s not surprising that the best scene in the whole show is not the hunting of the whale, the tragic death of Queequeg (Tom Swale), or even the pitiful begging of another ship’s captain to help find his lost son. It’s a scene where Ishmael explains the anatomy of a sperm whale to the audience, with the help of the rest of the cast holding pieces of wood in the shape of a giant whale’s head. At that moment, the drama shakes loose of the sea-anchor of the original novel, and stands on its own two feet as a piece of creative theatre.

The printed flyer for this production states proudly, under the words ‘UK tour 2024’: ‘Bold and brilliant – The Telegraph’. It also says ‘A new adaptation’. This is all somewhat misleading. The show is actually a revival of a production from 11 years ago, with different cast and creatives – so it is not exactly new. And that Telegraph comment was for the 2013 version, not this one. Advertising is of course vital, but this borders on misleading, and it is a shame the company felt it necessary to attract audiences in this way.

Having said that, the collaboration between Royal & Derngate Theatre and production company Simple8 is undoubtedly inventive and full of potential. Director Jesse Jones straddles both companies, and it is good to see the worlds of fringe and repertory continue to mingle with creative results. But the uneven pacing, the missed opportunity to create more vivid moments of thrilling spectacle, and the tendency to replace character and plot with possibly one or two too many sea-shanties, make this more of a Maybe- than a Moby-Dick.