SPYMONKEY'S MOBY DICK To 7 November.
Tour.
SPYMONKEY’S MOBY DICK
Tour to 7 November 2009.
Runs 2hr 10min One interval.
Review: Timothy Ramsden 21 September at Royal Theatre, Royal & Derngate Northampton.
Drama becalmed.
There’s nothing wrong, or particularly novel, in what Spymonkey, touring this show with Northampton’s Royal & Derngate, do, taking a well-known work of fiction as an excuse to show the comic capers they can produce. The actors are the pearls, Herman Melville’s book merely the string sort-of hanging them together. Such a process can be strangely impressive, usually when there’s a genuine affection for the original. There have been times when companies like Patrick Barlow’s National Theatre of Brent have highlighted the original better than dutiful slogs through acres of plot.
Not here, alas. There are many of the usual signs of a group of performers letting their own style loose over the original. Theatrical artifice is regarded as supremely interesting in itself, with jokes about the set, props or doubling of roles. So is the idea of a self-admiring company leader, and a victim who gets the rough end of things.
Occasionally ideas are wittily comic - Aitor Basauri’s Ishmael swivelling his bushy beard to form a youthful head of hair. But the theatrical jokes become incestuous (why do companies think the art of making illusions is so perennially fascinating?) while the repeated battering of bathos becomes wearisomely unvaried.
Meanwhile, Melville’s novel remains a pretext for the capers this company believe amusing. And, to report honestly, there was laughter at times, quite frequently in some parts of the auditorium, and some cheering come curtain-call. Maybe such stuff can seem a welcome release after too much theatre that asks to be taken seriously.
But it comes nowhere near justifying its running-time, despite Basauri in particular giving good value with his understated expressions - though his heavily-accented comedy can seem suspiciously like the funny foreigner reborn in politically correct times, where it’s all right so long as the foreign accent’s genuine.
Otherwise, the best moment is a storm, where, for once, Jos Houben’s production works with the story to create a vertiginous scene aboard the whaling-boat whose name throughout is, unfunnily, mispronounced. By contrast, there’s the quiet stretch where Ishmael says, the Pequod’s becalmed. And being becalmed, as he says, means boredom.
Cast: Aitor Basauri, Petra Massey, Toby Parks, Stephan Kreiss.
Director: Jos Houben.
Designer: Graeme Gilmour.
Lighting: Phil Supple.
Music: Tony Parks
Choreographers: Barry Grantham, Janine Fletcher.
Costume: Lucy Bradridge.
Associate director: Rob Thirtle.
2009-09-23 23:59:20