Theatre review: Spymonkey's Moby Dick, Traverse ****

Published on Friday 12 February 2010 10:07

IT'S laughter all the way at the Traverse this week, as physical theatre company Spymonkey take on one of the great American novels and twist its vast, symbol-laden narrative into a brief encounter with slapstick.

There's no doubting the audacity of Spymonkey in even thinking about doing this production. Nor, as audiences weep with laughter, is there much doubt of their success in bringing comedy to the novel. The question is whether they succeed in doing anything more.

The comedy, it must be said, is wickedly done and calls on a whole riot of techniques and genres. The four-strong company apply to the novel the sort of extended sketch format and mock-seriousness that The Comic Strip did to their early television shows.

Toby Park plays a self-important thespian type, intent on staging a faithful adaptation of Moby Dick.

His main role is, it goes without saying, Captain Ahab, the obsessed captain of the Pequad who is intent on hunting down the great white whale, Moby Dick.

Aitor Bassauri is a more physical performer and takes most seriously to his task of playing Ishmael, the novel's narrator. Speaking directly to the audience he begins to add a layer of music-hall or pantomime to the show, particularly when arguing with Parks over which of them can narrate.

Things become rather more surreal with Petra Massey's various characters. While arguing with Parks over who she can actually play – the novel is almost exclusively male – she ensures that whether she is a cabin boy or a mermaid, there is a powerful swell of sexual tension about her.

Aloof in his manner but brilliantly controlled in his performance, Stephen Kreiss emphasises the clowning and circus edge of comedy in his main role, Queequeg, the South Sea Islander harpooneer. It's all done with a completely straight face as he skitters around a flat surface as if it were ice.

As the plot flits along, its twisted logic could have been written by Spike Milligan for the Goon Show. It bursts into inappropriate song – Village People's In the Navy is particularly well-placed – or introduces the whale with a black-light sequence straight out of pantomime.

There's a touch of lazy writing as some comedy elements are used a couple of times too many – but it works so well that when the company need to calm things down a bit, they are on the verge of not being able to control an audience who have got a taste for participation.

So yes, this is more than a cleverly constructed bundle of laughs. It might not be quite how Herman Melville would have put it, but it captures something of what he was on about. And it certainly leaves you reflecting on what you have just witnessed.

Run ends tomorrow

Your Review: 'Marvellous .. I just liked the zaniness'

Rebecca Chenery, 24, Gardner, Bruntsfield: "I did a history degree and dissertation on whaling and I just got a bit immersed in all things whale. This was a great way to purge the months of toil. It was very light-hearted and slapstick. I read Moby Dick and this got the torment of the book. It was absurd but I loved it."

Karol Cebula, 63, Colinton, retired: "It was marvellous, I just liked the zaniness of it. I am so old that I can remember things like Monty Python, the Goons and the Marx Brothers and I have to say, it is very much in that kind of vein. I am surprised that people are still laughing at that kind of comedy. It was like a series of sketches, but all in the same place and based on Moby Dick. It worked."

Alfie Hinchliffe, 15, school student, Newington: "It was really funny. The first half was a bit slow and quite a lot of it was hit and miss, but as the show went on it was more hit than miss. I have seen plays where they try to completely recreate a book in theatre, but I think doing something different like this and making light of the original text brought a whole new level to it."