Moby Dick retold without a marauding white whale

Dead Puppet Society’s entertaining space opera based on Moby Dick doesn’t have a white whale, but there is a scary white entity out in space where nobody can hear you scream, writes Phil Brown.

Ishmael

How can you do a theatrical riff on Moby Dick without a white whale? In Dead Puppet Society’s space opera Ishmael there’s no whale but there is a big white entity terrorising the outer reaches of space. And the crew of the spaceship Pequod (yes that is the same name as the ship in Moby Dick) go hunting this behemoth after leaving a futuristic dead earth where the environment is now almost unliveable. So it’s a cautionary tale about the environment as well as being a good old fashion sci-fi yarn with a bit of gender swapping.

So we have a quest for something large and white – a female captain called Ahab, also a female Ishmael and a Queequeg ... so fans of the Herman Melville classic will be happy that those characters have survived in this highly entertaining Brisbane Festival offering in the Cremorne Theatre at QPAC.

Definitely a touch of Sigourney Weaver with Ellen Bailey who plays Ishmael and is seen here with Queequeg (Patrick Jhanur)

I frickin’ loved this show, but then again, I’m a sci-fi tragic and this show is full of sci-fi tropes which the Dead Puppet team (including dramaturg Louise Gough) haven’t shied away from. It’s a little bit Star Trek, there’s a touch of Thunderbirds, some Alien and even echoes of Total Recall and Terminator. Awesome.

The cast is superb. Veteran Brisbane actor Barb Lowing (who reckons her dad looked like Gregory Peck, the actor who played Ahab in the classic Hollywood film) plays a few roles but most significantly Captain Ahab, who is searching for the white behemoth that took her brother (I kept flashing back to that hilarious Alexie Sayle song Didn’t You Kill My Brother?)

Ishmael (and yes the play does starts as it should – Moby Dick fans will understand what I’m talking about) is played by Ellen Bailey, who is wonderful and definitely a tad Ripley-esque and that’s a good thing. As Alien fans will know, in space nobody can hear your scream but they can hear you shout and there’s a bit of shouting in this show when they are on the track of the white entity that may have eaten Ahab’s brother.

Ahab in the captain’s chair on the spaceship Pequod

In Moby Dick, one of the most fascinating characters is the Pacific Islander Queequeg, and in this space oddity the character is a droid played by Patrick Jhanur who has quite a stage presence. He is a convincing droid and he and Ishmael get close.

The puppetry in this show is done just offstage and projected on to a big screen that serves as a backdrop, and it’s cosmic at times and when the screen shows the view from the bridge with Ahab sitting in her captain’s chair I swear I heard the voice of Captain James Kirk of the starship Enterprise. And when things go pear-shaped you almost expect Scotty to run on stage shouting, in his thick Scottish brogue ... “she cannae take any more, captain!”

The best sci-fi is philosophical, and this production follows in that tradition and some of that is espoused by a voice from beyond later in the piece, a voice supplied by Anthony Standish. If you know your Star Trek it was Spock who espoused most profound philosophy in that show, and Jhanur is a bit Spockish at times – may he live long and prosper.

This multimedia, audiovisual extravaganza is clever and compelling and it has this killer original music soundtrack by Bec Sandridge.

Dead Puppet Society is led by David Morton and Nicholas Paine and these guys are creative geniuses who just keep coming up with the goods.

They have done it again with Ishmael, and Melville purists will appreciate the respectful nods to the original and this show retains the spirit of Moby Dick. Okay so there’s no whale. Get over it.

Ishmael, until September 18, Cremorne Theatre, QPAC; see website