The feel of eavesdroppers
The Merrill audience was treated to a marvelous piece of theater last night in the Acting Company’s rendition of Orson Welles’s Moby Dick Rehearsed. Sparse sets, rich lighting, imaginative direction, a brilliant script, and uniformly excellent acting made this a performance devoutly to be remembered.
As part of PCA’s marketing staff, I have been reading and writing about the show for a year now, so I knew what I was getting: Welles’s take on the many parallels between King Lear and Moby Dick. But the parallels were both more plentiful and less blatant than I expected, and I found myself never quite sure whether they were being drawn by Welles, or by Melville, or by the talented cast and director.
In the first scene, someone mentioned that Ahab’s whale was like Lear’s storm, and this was indeed the most fundamental parallel. Much later, when Stubb and Ahab feverishly call out from the whaleboat for Moby Dick to blow and spout and for the ship to crack, I heard Lear storming across the heath: “Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! rage! blow! You cataracts and hurricanoes, spout till you have drenched the steeples, drowned the cocks!”
One of my favorite moments came during the dialogue between Ahab and the carpenter as the latter fashions a new leg for the former. Since Ahab still has sensation in his missing leg even as the carpenter puts his living leg “in the place where mine was,” Ahab wonders whether entire living, thinking beings might not inhabit his very molecular space, watching him unseen and unfelt. In this scene in Melville’s novel, Ahab was making a hellfire and brimstone threat ("Why mayest not thou, carpenter, feel the fiery pains of hell for ever, and without a body? Hah!"). But this was Welles’s Ahab talking, not Melville’s – this Ahab fears not hell but “the feel of eavesdroppers” listening in on his “most solitary hours.”
I was very pleased to be allowed to be one of those eavesdroppers last night.
That was my take on it, but that’s just my part of a conversation, one that started many months ago with illuminating PCA Offstage lectures with the Portland Public Library, the Maine Historical Society, and the Portland Harbor Museum. Please, share with us and with your fellow audience members your thoughts and reactions using the comments feature below.
jac says:
While the acting, staging and ingenuity of the props were impressive, I was disappointed in the limited parralells drawn between Lear and Ahab within the text of the play. The newspaper review implied there was to be a unique comparison between the two characters’ obsessiveness. I heard little of that.
Perhaps I expected more than I should have, but there should have been a more tangible comparison within the play.
I also agree with the hard to hear comments above.
Will Hertz says:
Since I have twice used the PCA Blog to argue against the use of Merrill Auditorium for chamber music and recitals, I am responding to David A. Nicklas’s strong but flawed defense of that setting for that purpose.
I, too, enjoyed the performances of Finckel and Han, the Leipzig String Quartet, Christine Brewer, etc., but would have enjoyed them far more in a setting more appropriate for such intimate music. Bringing world-class performers to Portland is, of course, a valuable PCA service worthy of community financial support, but the results would be even more rewarding if they could play in a suitable performance space. Does Mr Nicklas deny there is considerable room for improvement?
Further, Mr. Nicklas’s argument that Merrill offered “a closer experience with the artist than the venues in which these same artists performed in Boston or New York? is simply untrue. New York and Boston both have concert halls smaller and more intimate than Merrill’s cavernous 2,000 seat auditorium. In New York, for example, Finckel and Han, play in the Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center and the 92nd Street Y, and in Boston in Jordan Hall and the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.
And such an alternative now exists in Portland – the new Abromson Hall across the expressway at the University of Southern Maine. The Portland Chamber Music Festival, which also brings outstanding artists to the community, now uses this venue for its concerts with impressive results. The counter-argument is that Abromson does not have a suitable piano. Well, Steinway ships concert grants all over the eastern U.S. from its NYC warehouse for concert use, and the Merrill auditorium concert grand could be trucked over to Abromson with care and a pre-concert tuning. Alternatively, a rental concert grand is available in Portland from Starbird.
Will Hertz
David A. Nicklas says:
What a powerful and ambitious presentation I saw from the fifth row on Wednesday evening. It is unfortunate that in order to present a dramatic event in Portland for more than 300 people, PCA, or anyone else, has to resort to Merrill Auditorium which was built for an organ; however, with foresight in the selection of a seat (I bought mine 15 minutes before the performance), I had a wonderful night at the theater. There were four empty seats next to me. Too bad that the person who left at intermission didn’t try to move forward rather than jump ship.
I disagree strongly with the opinion that Merrill should be scuttled for chamber music and recitals. Remember the beauty and quality of recent evenings with Finckel and Han, the Leipzig String Quartet, Christine Brewer, Tetzlaff, and Zimerman? The superb, attentive Portland audiences (including many students paying $10 or less) enjoyed world-class artists in a site offering a closer experience with the artist than the venues in which these same artists performed in Boston or New York (and at what ticket price there?). Yes, Portland could use an 800 to 1,000 seat concert hall, but so far no one has come forth with the $10,000,000 plus necessary to build a friendly place with sufficient parking which (shudder!) could generate enough revenue to support itself. I, for one, prefer to have world class performers in Portland for the pleasure of listeners who know them already and to introduce them to the next generation. The current alternatives in our area do not permit this economically or artistically.
David A. Nicklas
PCA Board Member
Bob says:
John, unfortunately, I’m unable to appreciate the problem you and others were having hearing, because we were seated in the second row and thought the actors were unusually loud. That being the case, I wonder how much is lost beyond the first ten rows in other productions? Is this a frequent complaint? Maybe my wife and I should not come to Merrill at all unless we can get seats close to the stage.
John says:
I agree with all of the previous comments. It was a powerful production filled with meaning. It was wonderfully staged. But, I could not understand any of the dialog even though we were in the orchestra. Very disappointed. Our entertainment dollars could have been better spent elsewhere.
Dick says:
We were seated in the third row of the balcony and found that the voices of the actors were very muddy and greatly diminished their efforts which seemed strong. We left at the intermission as it became a game of translation, particularly as some of the characters adopted accents appropriate to their parts. Would individual microphones have enhanced the performance. Frankly, it is disappointing to purchase tickets for a performance and then not be able to enjoy it.
Doug says:
I too loved the play and although actors did a great job the words became a continual rush of sound most of the play. We met friends that sat about 50 feet away from us and they were also disappointed with the sound.
The scenery was so well done that one could follow the story without the words, but that’s not the point is it?
I felt bad for the actors who gave their unappreciated best.
Will Hertz says:
“Moby Dick Rehearsed” and its production last night deserve the above plaudits, but not Merrill Auditorium where it was performed.
Some music lovers have long contended that Merrill is unsuitable for intimate chamber and instrumental music. Now add to that list drama, however well written and acted, that requires the audience to understand and follow the language.
I was sitting in row L—an ideal seat for music, ballet, opera, etc.,—but was unable to understand at least two-thirds of the dialogue. Add to this that the congestion of shipboard life, intrinsic to the play, was totally lost in the cavernous Merrill. And watching the crew going thru the motions of rowing the whale boat on a stage wide enough to house the PSO was a ridiculous theatrical experience.
The PCA executive director told me after the performance that she had scheduled this production as an experiment. I’m all in favor of experimenting with Merrill, but argue for an honest facing of the results when they are unfavorable. In this case, thumbs down.
And the results could not have been rewarding for the hard-working case and production crew considering the ho-hum response of the audience who shared my frustration.
PCA: Let’s retain the use of Merrill for big stage affairs, dance and opera companies, etc., but schedule chamber and intrumental recitals across the expressway in Abromson, where the Portland Chamber Music Festival now effectively performs. And find a smaller theater for dramas—or let Portland’s other theater companies handle that end of the assignment.
Bob says:
Excellent job by the cast and extremely well staged. All in all, quite a thetrical experience.
However, IMHO, it was too powerful, almost losing the human quality in the acting intensity. The only time I recall minimal intensity was when Ahab noted the small dent in his marital pillow. If there’s an algorithm in a theatrical theory book about a play needing a certain minimal percentage of lightness (I don’t pretend to know what the percentage is), it’s worthy of future consideration.
Will Everitt says:
I saw “Moby Dick Rehearsed” last night--what a powerful performance by the entire cast.
The play’s framing of the cast of King Lear rehearsing Moby-Dick captures, in a strange way, the modernism inherent in Melville’s novel, where non-fiction, fiction, solliquay and plays-inside-the-novel create a crazy synthesis.
One of the things I loved about this play was that the Lear cast slowly disappeared into Moby Dick, never to be seen as Shakespearian actors again, disappearing into the sea.
The sparse staging added to the mystery--the ending scene was worth seeing the play alone.
The one problem was the sound. The dialogue was muddied by the background music at times.
Peter says:
I, too, enjoyed the performance very much. The staging, settings and the choreography! were excellent.
One last, but important, point: I found the sound very muddied at times. Perhaps it was because of the need to speak strongly at times. It’s a shame, though, because the dialog I could understand was beautiful and poetic.
Peter