Moby Dick — Rehearsed

SHIP SHAPE: Brat Productions helms Moby Dick — Rehearsed with a steady hand.

by David Anthony Fox

Not long ago, I smugly thought I could summarize Herman Melville's masterpiece as a cocktail recipe: Mix equal parts testosterone and water; shake obsessively. Well, Brat's new production lacks both ingredients — the ensemble cast is entirely female, and the production is dry-docked on a stage — yet it's a riveting evening of theater in triumphantly full sail.

The script for this production is Moby Dick — Rehearsed, a half-century-old adaptation by Orson Welles that turns the novel into meta-theater: An ensemble of actors, initially planning to stage King Lear, decides instead to create a staged reading of Moby.

Welles almost certainly never imagined a cast of women (in fact, his juxtaposition of Lear and Moby plays particularly with male archetypes). Yet that's how director Madi Distefano has staged it and moreover, she offers no explanation or "concept."

Initially, I was skeptical. Hearing so many light, youthful voices spouting Melville-ian prose sounded like a hallelujah day in Mr. Kotter's class. But the acting grows in authority, and soon the performers seem completely at home.

More than at home: In fact, the casting allows us to think about Moby-Dick in a new way, to recognize how much hangs on the tensions between traditionally masculine characteristics — aggression, power, the need to conquer — and the more "feminine" virtues of care giving and compassion (the encounter between Captain Ahab and Captain Gardiner of The Rachel is a prime example).

It helps immeasurably, of course, that Melville's story is such a spellbinder — also that Welles' adaptation, though inevitably simplifying the novel, is so gripping.

And Distefano's production is fully up to the task. The women of the ensemble are excellent — equally convincing when singing sea shanties or bounding masts at lightning speed. Of the principal actors, Drucie McDaniel (Ahab) lacks some of the craziness and grandeur, but is otherwise superb. Lori-Nan Engler (Starbuck) and Caroline Tamas (Ishmael) are also very fine. The unlikeliest piece of casting — Pip, the black cabin boy, is played by Amanda Schoonover, a young white woman — may be the best: Schoonover makes Pip hauntingly sad and beautiful.

Most of all, this Moby Dick is a lesson in the magic of the theater. It is stunningly staged and lit (by John Stephen Hoey), and offers some of the most memorable visual images I've seen this season. Early on in the show, one of the actors wonders incredulously how they can create all the necessary effects: the ship, the typhoon, the whale!

They do and do it splendidly.

MOBY DICK — REHEARSED Through June 12, Brat Productions at Christ Church Annex, Second and Church sts., 215-413-0975

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