Melville’s MOBY DICK Review/Jack Studio Theatre 8-26 October 2019

Chris Lilly • 16 October 2019
‘ … exciting visuals and projections, all integrated seamlessly into the live action’ ★★★★

As some of you may know, the Starbuck Coffee Conglomerate was named, somewhat randomly, after the first mate of the Pequod, Captain Ahab’s whaling ship that he used as an instrument to destroy that Oceanic Titan, Moby Dick. Starbucks is also part of a capitalist conspiracy to fill the oceans of the world with non-recyclable coffee cups. I don’t know for sure, but this congruity may have helped inspire Douglas Baker and So It Goes Theatre to develop their show ‘Moby Dick’, currently running at the Jack Studio Theatre. 

The play condenses 700 and some pages of Herman Melville’s discursive prose into a tidy 80 minute narrative that focuses on the plot, pretty much ignores the chapters on ‘whiteness’ and the other diversions that intrigued Mr. Melville, and folds in a moral fable about our indifference to the health of our planet. 

The writer/director Douglas Baker employs interesting video effects and liberal splashes of humour, including a batch of Sea-Shanties for the Twenty-First Century, which sound old style till you catch on to the lyrical content. It is excellent fun. There is a lot of joy in the recreation of a Nantucket Sleigh Ride so dynamic there’s a danger of sympathetic sea-sickness, there is a developing tenderness between Ishmael and the South Sea Island harpooneer Queequeg, who takes the new seaman into his protection on the whaling ship, and rescues him from a graphic death-by-drowning in spermaceti oil. The good-natured japery of the first hour makes the gear-change into Ahab’s mortal obsession, and the serious illustration of the pollution by plastic of the oceans, a touch abrupt, and maybe a little undercut? The intention is, I think, to give us a good time and then drive home the message when we are relaxed, but I didn’t feel very caught up in the destruction of the ship and its crew, which is I think a loss – Melville makes the crew real and approachable, and their doom is biting. This take on the novel dispenses with characters in favour of gags. But when you squeeze a book that big and complex into a short evening’s entertainment, something has to go, and the choices Douglas Baker makes are coherent and tell his tale effectively. 

The company employs lots of exciting visuals and projections, all integrated seamlessly into the live action. It also features a large number of silly props which the company wielded with enthusiasm and skill. It’s always good to see a well-used silly prop. This was a fine entertainment, an interesting and novel theatrical statement, and a worthy attempt to make important political points without preaching. It would be invidious to single out a particular performance from a very well-integrated ensemble of five actors (Ben Howarth, Rob Peacock, Charlie Tantam, Stephen Erhirhi, and Lucianne Regan) but another name-check for Douglas Baker, for video design, is well-merited. 




MOBY DICK by Herman Melville
Presented by So It Goes Theatre
adapted and directed by Douglas Baker
Brockley Jack Studio Theatre 8 - 26 October 2019


Reviewer Chris Lilly read Drama at Hull University in the 70’s, stage-managed a bit, worked in Community Theatre in East London for a bit, then took a teaching job and taught in Inner London for twenty-some years. Since retiring, he has indulged a passion for Theatre that had been sleeping for a while and is currently taking an MA in Theatre at the University of Surrey. chris.lilly.work@gmail.com

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