Spymonkey's Moby Dick at Canterbury
Canterbury Festival
THE epic tale of Moby Dick is not one that naturally lends itself to a stage production.
There is the issue of the ocean for starters, and a galleon. Oh, and an enormous white whale that eats ships whole.
Much better left to the written word to chronicle in detail the adventures of Captain Ahab and his motley crew.
But theatre company SpyMonkey had other ideas and on Thursday presented a crackling, surreal comedic interpretation of the classic story at the Gulbenkian Theatre as part of a two-night run for the Canterbury Festival.
It left the audience breathless with laughter as they watched a theatre company trying to stage the epic - a sort of play within a play.
In the first scene the company director asked: "Why Moby Dick?"
The answer: "It's on all the flyers and is on the National Curriculum."
The players then launched into what can only be described as an awful lot of silliness.
The show made inspired use of creative lighting, projections and ultra violet lamps to recreate underwater scenes, great whaling battles and monstrous storms, one of which morphed into a rendition of the Village People's hit YMCA.
The actors leapt around the stage in various guises including a stunning golden mermaid, Pip the cabin boy and a cannibal harpoonist from Bavaria.
Every one of the four performers was hilariously on-form but Aitor Basauri in the lead role shone with his utterly bonkers performance.
They made the audience act as wind, rain and sea - and even a lone seagull.
The final scene featured the ramshackle crew shipwrecked but alive, joined on stage by a 20-strong candle-bearing choir singing Bright Eyes.
Yes, the song is about rabbits and nothing to do with whales but we joined in the chorus with gusto, enjoying the surreal and glorious spectacle of the University of Kent theatre filled with arm-waving people.
Altogether now, Bri-ight Eyes, burning like fire." Fantastic.
Jo Treharne.
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