Landlubbers beware! Buntport hath lampooned the whale!
Do not arrive late for “Moby Dick Unread.” The curtain-raising scene done by Erik Edborg is sublime in its supremely funny conception and execution. It involves a toy whale, an aquarium and one of the funniest faces and physiologies to hit the Denver stage in eons. More I will not tell you. You have got to experience this funny bone satisfying condensation of the essentials of Melville’s novel for yourself. Brian Colonna’s a Pip which slips beneath the waves to Davey Jones’ Locker as skillfully as he ascends to the light at the top of the waves, er, buckets. This is Moby Dick with the blubber left on. All the parts you skipped over to get to the juicy parts are suddenly alive with the imaginative writing, acting and staging at Buntport. Izaiah d. buzeth’s sound design for “Moby Dick Unread” is so right on target that whenever he aims his sonic wand at the young geniuses on stage, their art is experienced to an exponentially funny degree. Magnificent! Hannah Duggan is especially funny as the peg-legged Ahab. One scene in which the Pequod skims over the stage and past the first row with Ms. Duggan staring stony-visaged above the crowd, did not receive the applause and laughter that it should have on the night I attended. It was a moment of sublime cinematic theatricality of the comic variety. The marvelous inventiveness of the scenic design comes from that childlike creativity one associates with the sandbox. And as Hamlet says, “The play’s the thing.” The energy of this group is formidable as they take on the major and minor characters of Melville’s famous tome. Erin Rollman is outstanding in numerous roles which are delineated in costume and prop only by the switching to beard or hat or pipe. There is a storm in which it rains “buckets,” which is magnificently staged with Buntport’s signature panache. The show is dazzling, and I must thank Buntport. Now I don’t ever have to read the book.
Get on board the Pequod now or be keel-hauled by those who color within the lines!
Not to be missed.
-David Marlowe, April 2007, Out Front