Jack’s fan review of A WHITE WHALE made us giggle at first, but then we blushed at the compliments!
Jack heard our show through the Thornhill Theatre Virtual Audio Festival.
I’ll listen to anything with Dick in the title. Especially if there’s a chance of people getting eaten by something other than zombies. But I wouldn’t give five stars based on that. It has to have other good bits in too and I’m not just talking about rude stuff.
I’ll try to keep it fairly serious in this review. I don’t want to cause offence. It’s fun to joke around a bit but the most important thing to get across is that A Theater in the Dark worked really hard on this project so I don’t want to show disrespect.
This is one of the audio dramas which forms part of Thornhill Theatre Space’s #TTSFringe2. It’s a great addition to the festival and also a great introduction to A Theater in the Dark’s work. They have other plays available for very good prices and judging on the quality of this one it’s worth giving the others a listen.
This audio play is based on the book (which I haven’t read, I really should) Moby-Dick; or, The Whale. I like the way Corey Bradberry, who adapted this, has messed with the title and the punctuation. That tells you straight away that he cares about the book but he has the creativity to do his own thing and the intelligence to realise that the semi colon and comma combination just looks odd to a modern day audience. Two very good signs already and that’s just from the title.
Some things of course can’t be changed. The opening line is so iconic, even I knew it and that’s how the audio drama begins, strongly proclaimed by Elizabeth McCoy. It’s written in an interesting way – there are times when it feels like narration and times when it has a more dramatic feel but it seriously fits really well together. It flows, there’s no jarring, it feels totally natural.
It can be difficult to represent whales and boats onstage (though I’m sure Theater in the Dark have the ingenuity to make it work if they wanted to) but one thing you can do with audio drama if you’ve got a really good director (Corey Bradberry again) is create a sense of atmosphere. Theater in the Dark have really pushed the boat out here and they give us all a whale of a time.
First they have original music by Nick Montopoli. It’s seriously high quality, it’s better than some of the music you hear in film scores. It’s good music because it really is part of the story and it helps get you even more caught up in the drama. But it is also good music. A lot of film music is quite simple and generic and it doesn’t really stand up on its own but this music does. This score is right up there with some of the music at the BBC Proms. Seriously good stuff and the orchestration is brilliant.
Then there’s the soundscape design, by Mack Gordon with Corey Bradberry, who is also the sound engineer. The sounds really help set the scene and they’re realistic and it all adds to the feeling that you’re on the ship with the characters and really helps you to conjure up everything that happens so you can see it in your head. This is especially important when you’ve got a major character (a title character) who doesn’t have any lines. You need to believe in Moby Dick and I did.
But there is one thing with sound which I think is really key and not really mentioned but while music and sound design are really important, a good production isn’t just about what you do hear. It’s what you don’t hear. The way this production uses silence is really effective. Whether the music just stops or if you suddenly realise it’s not there anymore, these moments are an important part of the sound design too. It really does feel like you’re on a ship, on the sea and in the middle of a really good adventure story.
It’s hard to believe there are only three cast members. They take on all the different characters really well. I think it’s great to have a female actor in the cast, this is the 21st century so there’s no reason not to and Elizabeth McCoy does a great job. She’s likeable and relatable and a really good actor who performs her characters really well, especially Ishmael. Women can play these characters just as well as men, in some cases they do it better. Her Ishmael has vulnerability but he’s not weak. Massive difference.
Robinson J. Cyprian plays Captain Ahab who has particular reason to hate Moby Dick. He characterises him brilliantly. He’s not exactly likeable but he’s an interesting and three-dimensional character. Robinson gets you invested and makes you want to know what he’s going to do next even if you don’t always like it. Mack Gordon gives strong performances as Starbuck and Stubb, members of the crew.
A White Whale: or, Moby Dick is a really interesting and fun play and it really wants to make me read the book too. And it’s not every day that I want to read a book.
Read Jack’s review on Mobile Theatre here:
https://mobiletheatreblog.blogspot.com/2021/09/a-white-whale-or-moby-dick-thornhill.html