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TOTS to open with ‘Moby Dick: The Musical!’

When you think of Sir Cameron Mackintosh, you’re likely to connect him with epic musicals along the lines of Miss Saigon, Les Misérables and The Phantom of the Opera — and the longest-running musical in the West End or Broadway, Cats. Since Cats, shows that Mackintosh chooses to produce seem to be given a magic touch of immortality.

Ron Spencer directs a school of white umbrellas, which represent the whale in ‘Moby Dick: The Musical!’

One show that Mackintosh seems hell-bent to raise from the dead is Moby Dick: The Musical! Theatre on the Square will stage the latest resuscitation starting Aug. 15. What TOTS will put on is the latest of over a dozen incarnations of the show since it originally manifested itself through creators Hereward Kaye and Robert Longden, at which time the story was set in Venice — because someone had given their fledgling theater company a backdrop of Venice. Though the show has been tweaked, workshopped and altered somewhat for American (as opposed to British) audiences, the premise of the story remains: An all-girls school is desperate for money, and so they decide to put on a fund-raiser in the form of a performance of Herman Melville’s Moby Dick. Please keep your tongues firmly in cheek when contemplating this concept. In the beginning … What in the world would give genesis to this idea? Hereward Kaye, music and additional lyrics for MD, gives us this picture: “A summer festival in London, the Capital Jazz Festival. They wanted something with a watery theme, because there’s this lovely part of London named Camden Lock, surrounded by clubs and bars, that they wanted to bring alive. My inspired creative partner at the time, who knew a great deal more about musicals than I did, Robert Longden, was a wild card, and he thought, ‘Let’s not mess around here, what about America’s most famous book?’ And so it came to pass, we staged a 50 minute version of Moby Dick on a barge on a strip of water in the center of trendy London as disinterested drinkers ignored us.” In 1991, Mackintosh gave Moby a new chance at life. Why? Kaye says, “Secretly, he’s a rebel.” Mackintosh, however, has stated that it was an “irresistibly outlandish, toe-tapping challenge.” Persistence is what has brought this show to the States, and producer and writers won’t give up. Kaye says, “You know when you’re on to something. I think, for me, it was one moment during that disastrous Camden Lock first try out version when it all came together. There was this mogodan army of actors being miserable Quakers, singing the first song I had ever written for a musical, shuffling up the gangplank in a paranoid fashion onto our dodgy, makeshift, floating stage. But my co-writer Robert, who dreamt up the whole thing in the first place, had quite inspirationally — and for the sole purpose of grabbing attention — given each and every Quaker a yellow plastic duty-free bag stuffed with a couple of cartons of Marlboro. That was in the days before sponsorship of course, and we totally reject the idea of smoking now, but Marlboro, if you’re still out there ...” The voices of dissent Mackintosh locked onto Moby — sponsorship or not — and in September of 1991, the show went up at the Oxford Fire Station (sans Venetian backdrop). After a successful run, it went to London in 1992, where it was unleashed on what Mackintosh called a “hostile” press. However, Kaye says, “It wasn’t poorly received. It wasn’t fantastically received, that’s for sure, but neither was Les Mis when it first opened, believe it or not. But the less favorable reviews outweighed the favorable ones, and were more newsworthy at the time.” Mackintosh noted in the MD 1992 CD liner notes that “Curiously, the only critics that appreciated Moby Dick for what it was were the same four lone voices that had recognized Les Misérables as something special and different.” But whereas Les Mis persevered, Moby Dick seemed to wash away into relative obscurity. Russell Ochocki, who helped re-work the musical for its newest audiences in the U.S., blames Moby’s poor reception on bad timing. “Part of the problem originally was because it was in the wrong time, and wrong space. It came out in an era when all musicals were gothic, mega pop operas. Les Mis was still a big hit, Andrew Lloyd Webber, and there really wasn’t anything that was musical comedy. So this show didn’t sit with the era. “Now, there are more lighthearted shows, like Hairspray and some Off-Broadway shows. People are willing again to just have an evening of fun, which was missing when Moby Dick opened.” Dick Heads Moby never did disappear completely. Its original school of fans remained, and grew. Mackintosh has stated that “The show never lost its hard-core fans, and Moby Dick has managed over the years to turn up in the most unlikely places accompanied by appropriate (and sometimes inappropriate) re-writes and adoring audiences. When I discovered that a group of Dick Heads, led by Russell Ochocki, were lurking in that hot bed of musical theater, Music Theatre International, I was delighted that they wanted to give Moby Dick a chance to explode on an unsuspecting American public …” The Dick Heads seem scarce, though, and little can be found on them, or their beloved musical. Kaye says about the Dick Heads: “Er, I’ve met a few of them in my time, but they weren’t particularly followers of the show ...” The fellows involved with Moby never gave up, and their belief in the show and their time spent re-working it will enable the great white whale to surface as a full-scale production for the first time in the States right here in Indianapolis. Ochocki’s job was to give Moby a good once-over. “A lot of times people will be called in to advise,” he says. “After people have worked in a show for a long time, after a while you’re not seeing what you are doing. [I’m] evaluating from a fresh standpoint.” Plus, Ochocki helped “translate” Moby from British-English to American-English through language and by doing such things as placing the school in a non-descript American location. Local news Moby Dick has been “workshopped” in the U.S., but this will be the first time it has been “staged” here. David Stine, a longtime friend of TOTS, jumped at the chance for the small theater to host this revival and orchestrated its inclusion in the TOTS season. Stine is a Kaye fan, and requested the rights to the show. He subsequently attended the January ’03 workshops of Moby Dick in New York, where the show got its finishing touches before its premiere at TOTS. Stine’s timing was perfect, as Mackintosh had been looking for a small American theater to “test market” the newest version of the show. The goal is for Moby Dick to take a New York stage for the 2004-’05 season. The cast of 24, 16 of whom are teen-agers from local high schools, will tackle the musical, along with Indianapolis theater veterans such as Kate Ayres, Ronnie Johnstone, Kurt Owens, Jeff Van Paris and Collin Poynter. The show is directed and choreographed by TOTS Executive Artistic Director Ron Spencer. Vocal director is J. Kevin Butler, and Ray Lahrman is the musical director. Moby Dick: The Musical!, with book, music and lyrics by Robert Longden and Hereward Kaye, will be on Theatre on the Square’s Mainstage, 627 Massachusetts Ave., Aug. 15-Sept. 13. For tickets and information, call 637-8085. For music and info on the musical, go to mobydickthemusical.com.

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