“Moby Dick Unread” begins with a mad actor dropping a tiny wind-up whale into an aquarium.
Hit the dramatic music, and soon Erik Edborg is splashing madly trying to retrieve the toy, finally taking a desperate cue from Buster Keaton and attempting a candy- apple-style head-bob. He fails. He silently curses the gods. Blackout.
This prologue could be subtitled, “Moby Dick in Miniature.”
They’re lying, of course, with that “Unread” title. The smarty-pants from the Buntport Theater have not only pored over Herman Melville’s 135-chapter classic, they’ve likely burned a few bags of popcorn mocking Gregory Peck and Patrick Stewart taking turns as the apoplectic Ahab on celluloid.
“Moby Dick Unread” is Buntport’s 21st original undertaking, though if this great young company has an m.o., it’s just this kind of quirky literary re-interpretation (having already toyed with “Cinderella,” “The Odyssey,” “Hamlet,” “Titus Andronicus” and “Don Quixote,” not to mention five years of “Magnets on the Fridge” book-club episodes).
These are theatrical Cliff’sNotes for short-attention spans – respectful of the original but infinitely more fun.
Walking into Buntport is like walking into a new world every time. This group of six thirtyish pals always comes up with something so wonderful to behold, you feel like a kid again.
For “Moby Dick Unread,” it’s the 15 pails of water dangling from the rafters, which will become overturned during a brilliantly staged storm. It’s the glorified canoe on wheels that doubles as the Pequod. It’s the use of Edborg’s stomach as a storyboard. It’s the chalkboard etching of a whale against a wall that’s just big enough to make the man standing in front of it appear to be Jonah inside that other famous fish’s belly.
It’s easy to see how staging Ahab’s epic, ongoing aquatic chase on dry land must have seemed irresistible to Buntport. The universality of our obsessive need to stare down our demons is evident to anyone who’s seen “Zodiac.” White whales: We all have one.
But at its core, Melville’s tale is a lonely and solitary pursuit. Buntport also captures its melancholy, as well as its musical, mystical and religious undertones. There’s a constant underscore of ocean sounds punctuated by sad strings and hearty whaler songs. Like the book, this staging is funny and weird, and ultimately quite sad.
Our four on-stage actors are Edborg, Erin Rollman, Hannah Duggan and Brian Colonna (with Evan Weissman pulling backstage ropes and Samantha Schmitz handling technical duties). In quick-change fashion they bring us Ishmael, Starbuck, Elijah, Queequeg, Pip and more.
But this ensemble, which writes and stages all its shows in collaboration, is also charmingly enamored with Melville’s odd meanderings and side stories, which is why they bill the show as “Moby Dick with the fat left on” – while still coming in at a lickety-split 80 minutes.
The actors have self-deprecating fun with their own lack of ethnicity (the crew of the Pequod was multinational, and our four actors are as white as Ahab’s whalebone leg). They each have great moments but this time it’s the versatile Edborg, and particularly Duggan as the revenge-driven Ahab, who most resonate.
The actors’ recurring mantra is, “We’re making do.” And do they, until things end with a thud. After that stunningly staged storm comes the climactic chase, in which Ahab gets caught in harpoon ropes and becomes forever lashed to the whale. But we don’t see it. We’re told straight out, “We couldn’t think how to show that to you.” So, finis.
I appreciated the honesty, but having been spoiled by that storm, I felt let down. It didn’t seem so much like they were “making do,” it seemed like perhaps they had just run out of time.
-John Moore, April 5, 2007 Denver Post