Hufvudstadsbladet / Linnea Stara 19.3.2010

 

MELVILLE CAUGHT IN A NET OF CLOWNS

 

Spymonkey’s Moby Dick

Direction: Jos Houben. Scenography: Graeme Gilmour. Costumes, props: Lucy Bradridge. Music: Toby Park. Performers: Aitor Basauri, Petra Massey, Toby Park, Stephan Kreiss. Spymonkey, a guest production at Espoo City Theatre, 16–20.3.2010.

 

Herman Melville’s novel Moby Dick (1851) is a long doorstopper of a book about one man’s obsessive search for a great white whale. Now audiences have the chance to get to acquaint themselves with this seminal work in a somewhat lighter incarnation at the Espoo Cultural Centre in Tapiola. Yes, the British Spymonkey Theatre Company is back in Finland with its latest production.

 

In Spymonkey’s deliciously irreverent reworking of Melville’s novel, directed by Jos Houben, we skip over all the boring chapters, have all those complicated orders explained, and encounter the mastodon itself, all crammed into a performance that lasts just over two hours.

 

Ishmael, the narrator of Melville’s novel, is played with great charm by Aitor Basauri. The bulk of the interaction with the audience rests on his shoulders, and it’s not long before he has the whole auditorium joining in and singing in the aisles. Stephan Kreiss demonstrates a fine command of slapstick comedy as, dressed in a pair of patent-leather shoes, he tries to keep his balance on the ship Pequod in the role of the cannibal and harpooner Queequeg. The infamous captain Ahab, the man with his beady eye on a certain whale, is played by Toby Park, a young man with every bit as much sex appeal as Gregory Peck, only without the self-important demeanour.

 

Still, it is the attention-seeking Petra Massey who gets the biggest laughs of the evening. As the ship is about to set sail, she resolutely jumps up on board and barges her way into a story without any female characters. “I didn’t read the book, I didn’t know there weren’t any female parts,” Massey explains to her shipmates. Later on she reappears in a variety of roles, including as a mermaid with a beautiful voice dreaming about a beaver.

 

The humour in Spymonkey’s Moby Dick is based not only on perfectly timed physical comedy, but also on various meta-theatrical revelations. The theatrical illusion is broken time and again in true Brechtian style. One might hope that more high-school-aged viewers find their way to the theatre to watch this production, as it is all too rare that audiences are offered such a splendid opportunity to experience such theatre play and interaction between performers and the auditorium.

 

The performance is rounded off with a very local surprise.