The production of Moby-Dick, or the Whale at Book-It is faithful to the events in Herman Melville's novel, entertaining at times, inventive about how to use the stage, unexpectedly dark in a few scenes where darkness is vital, and propelled by a strong, angry, exasperated go at Captain Ahab by Wesley Rice. It was adapted and directed by David Quicksall, who seems to have given generous thought to Ahab's interior life, as well as Starbuck's. The heart-stopping scene in the book when Starbuck, the ship's first mate, is standing outside Ahab's cabin with Ahab's gun in his hand trying to decide whether he should just kill the old man so the rest of them can get home to their wives and children rather than sail toward certain death—that scene is done quite nicely. Jim Gall, as Starbuck, has by that point in act two lost the train-conductor-like stiffness he insists on during act one; as Starbuck slips into low-level panic mode, Gall warms to the plight of his character. Rice and Gall are two of only three union actors in the show. The third is Eric Ray Anderson, who is a member of the ensemble—he plays four roles—but who is so good as to be transporting. He really does seem like he's been flown in straight from the 1850s and thrilled to be here.
If you ever wanted an object lesson in union actors versus nonunion actors, this would be a good one. The nonunion actors, including—fatally—David Hogan as Ishmael, seem to be in a different show. To be fair, playing Ishmael the way he comes across in the book is a lot harder than playing Ahab (raving mad) or Starbuck (worriedly deferential), because Ishmael's personality comes through not by anything he does but through the tone of the novel: the way he minimizes things, the way he makes fun of the idea of knowing all there is to know about anything, the way he is both earnest and totally unsure. He's funny in a way that almost redefines dryness, which is why playing his words for laughs just decimates the material. As he's crawling into bed in a strange inn in the novel, Ishmael says, "Whether that mattress was stuffed with corncobs or broken crockery, there is no telling, but I rolled about a good deal, and could not sleep for a long time." In this version, Ishmael exclaims as he gets into bed, "I can't tell if this mattress is stuffed with corncobs or broken crockery!" Ka-boing! The lines Hogan delivers that way go down in courtesy guffaws. When he's not doing the earnest/happy/stupid Ishmael, Hogan does the I Am the Narrator of a Serious Work of Literature Ishmael, which is far more grating. Every. Single line. Is read in a manner. That makes. You want. To kill the. Actor. It sounds self-important. But Ishmael is fundamentally not self-important. That's a big part of what's so charming about him.
How awesome it would have been had Quicksall pushed Hogan to take his cues from the lighter aspects of the adaptation he's assembled. There is evidence that Quicksall gets the sly humor of the book. The cetology chapter, for instance, is represented with a brief presentation regarding different kinds of whales using visual aids on white pieces of poster board that different actors hold up—with exactly the kind of irreverent, scrambled- together-just-now energy that makes the book such an odd force and that chapter in particular so funny. Some beautiful, abstract staging animates the calamitous events that happen at the end. If you long for Quicksall to forego the curtain call and let the cast remain swept off into oblivion, well, you will be disappointed, because then they all come galumphing back onto the stage, grinning and waving, like, Hey, we were just in this show! No, no, no. That's not how the story ends! 
