Irish actor Conor Lovett has so successfully played the protagonists of Samuel Beckett’s fictional world as to seem the incarnation of these wandering dispossessed. But with the first lines of Gare Saint Lazare Players Ireland’s “Moby Dick”, we are ready to call him Ishmael indeed and set sail for uncharted waters under his sure steering. Lovett and his collaborator in life and art, Judy Hegarty, who directs him in all of the company’s Beckett repertory, which includes the acclaimed trilogy “Molloy”, “Malone Dies” and “The Unnamable”, have created from Herman Melville’s masterpiece, a quiet tour de force for a single actor.
While reducing the 700-odd page text to a swift two-hour crossing of Melville’s whirling, eddying tale, Lovett and Hegarty have kept the original language intact throughout. As delivered by Lovett, whose Ishmael is a comically introspective, even squeamish old salt, Melville’s unique idiom keeps us hanging on every word, from the wryly wary description of Ishmael’s insalubrious lodgings (and roommate Queequeg) in New Bedford, Mass., to his awed tableau of the maelstrom with which the cursed Pequod is sucked to its watery grave. Martin Lewis’ musical accompaniment (voice and flute) provides a mariner’s complaint and poetic counterpoint to Ahab’s raving, fanatical quest. You can almost feel the spray break across the bow…
Performed at the Irish Cultural Center, May 7-8. For more information about Gare St. Lazare Players Ireland, visit the company’s website: www.garestlazareplayersireland.com.
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