Lorna Irvine finds much to love about this week's lunchtime theatre offer.
There is an irresistible irreverance and punky spirit to this week's addition to the season of Classic Cuts--it's enough to make Herman Melville blush.
Directed by the great Gareth Nicholls, our (anti)heroes walk in though the back door, singing in lusty voice the sea shanties of yore (Greenland Whale Fisheries sounding particularly ribald) while the elusive whale is represented by a live goldfish. Nice.
The salty trio of Meg Fraser (particularly fine as a gender-swapped Ahab and cheeky innkeeper) Robert Jack in various roles including Ishmal and Stubb, and Harry Ward as Starbuck and looping soundscapes, flit between the poetry of JC Marshall's adaptation with ease, filled to the brim with rum-soaked cries. They also play evocative accordion, mandolin and acoustic guitar.
A dreamy, languid pace permeates, interrupted by bursts of fever, madness and a hilarious scene with Queequeg's menacing glare. It's forever pitched between hysteria and ennui, all sense of time and space a dim and distant memory. Limitations in staging an hour's worth deliberately allude to the sheer volume of chapters (it starts at ninety, and often lands seemingly at random numbers) keeps the audience bobbing buoyantly along until the melancholic ending, wherein the ''shroud of the sea'' engulfs yet more victims.
At Oran Mor’s A Play, a Pie and a Pint until June 27.
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