Moby Dick (musical)

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Poster for the original Old Fire Station production MobyDickPoster.jpg
Poster for the original Old Fire Station production

Moby Dick is a musical with a book by Robert Longden, and music and lyrics by Longden and Hereward Kaye, first staged in 1990. The plot follows the anarchic and nubile girls of St. Godley's Academy for Young Ladies who, determined to save the institution from bankruptcy, decide to stage Herman Melville's classic 1851 novel in the school's swimming pool. The musical is a mixture of high camp, music hall-style smut, and wild anachronism overflowing with double entendres; the lead role of headmistress/Captain Ahab is portrayed by a man in drag.

Contents

Originally produced as Moby Dick: A Whale of a Tale, and alternatively known as Moby Dick! The Musical, or Moby!, the show has proven to be a popular choice with regional theatre groups. Since 2003 a more Americanized version deleted the unfamiliar British references and played down many of the burlesque aspects.

Initial productions

Producer Cameron Mackintosh, having become involved with the restoration of Oxford's Old Fire Station Theatre, sought a new musical to inaugurate the restored venue. Impressed by an audio tape sent him by Longden, Mackintosh offered £25,000 to stage Moby Dick: A Whale of a Tale. Originally an intimate piece with a cast of twelve performing with an upright piano, it became a greatly expanded version featuring a troupe of thirty and a six-piece band. The end result was a madcap romp, with veteran cabaret star Tony Monopoly playing the headmistress/Captain Ahab in drag, that immediately developed a cult following among the university students.

Following the stint at Oxford, the show was staged aboard the Old Profanity Showboat where after a slow start, the engagement quickly sold out.

West End transfer

Against the advice of his staff, Mackintosh decided the show was suited for a full-fledged West End theatre production, and in March 1992 he transferred it to the cavernous Piccadilly Theatre, where it opened to almost universally scathing reviews. Despite an increasingly appreciative crowd and nightly ovations, the musical failed to find its audience quickly enough and the economics of the large venue forced it to close after four months. Such was its public appeal, Cameron later recalled, that the announcement of closure sent audience reaction into orbit and it barnstormed out of the West End as if it were one of the greatest hits of all time. [1]

American premiere

In 1993, Longdon directed the American premier in New Bedford, Massachusetts, where the original novel begins, and where Melville himself had worked as a whaler. The cast included Ed Dixon as headmistress/Ahab, Terri White as Ahab's wife, Cindy Marchionda as Ishmael, and Ellen D. Williams in the ensemble.

Characters

The Ensemble play Sailors, Shrunken Heads, Wives, Heathens, and Ghosts.

Musical numbers

Original song list
2003 song list

Notes

  1. Caught by the Tale - a foreword to the Moby Dick cast recording (DICKCD1)

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Queequeg is a character in the 1851 novel Moby-Dick by American author Herman Melville. The son of a South Sea chieftain who left home to explore the world, Queequeg is the first principal character encountered by the narrator, Ishmael. The quick friendship and relationship of equality between the tattooed cannibal and the white sailor show Melville's basic theme of shipboard democracy as well as his fondness for Polynesians. Once aboard the whaling ship Pequod, Queequeg becomes the harpooner for the mate Starbuck.

<i>Pequod</i> (<i>Moby-Dick</i>) Fictional ship from the novel Moby-Dick

Pequod is a fictional 19th-century Nantucket whaling ship that appears in the 1851 novel Moby-Dick by American author Herman Melville. Pequod and her crew, commanded by Captain Ahab, are central to the story, which, after the initial chapters, takes place almost entirely aboard the ship during a three-year whaling expedition in the Atlantic, Indian and South Pacific oceans. Most of the characters in the novel are part of Pequod's crew.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Captain Ahab</span> Fictional character from the novel Moby-Dick

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Moby Dick (whale)</span> Fictional whale, namesake of the novel Moby-Dick

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Bulkington is a character in Herman Melville's 1851 novel Moby-Dick. Bulkington is referred to only by his last name and appears only twice, briefly in Chapter 3, "The Spouter Inn", and then in Chapter 23, "The Lee Shore", a short chapter of several hundred words devoted entirely to him.

Pip, short for Pippin, is the African-American cabin-boy on the whaling-ship Pequod in Herman Melville's 1851 novel, Moby-Dick. When Pip falls overboard he is left stranded in the sea, and rescued only by chance and becomes "mad." The book's narrator, Ishmael, however, thinks that this "madness" gives Pip the power to see the world as it is. Pip is first described as "insignificant," but is the only member of the crew to awaken feelings of humanity in Ahab, the ship's monomaniacal captain.

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