Don’t take my blog silence as an indication of a really deep Holy Week spiritual statement.  Life simply goes on here, and it’s very busy this week, since we’ve decided to take the bull by the horns – this particular bull being some nagging house issues that need to be taken care of, and now with the warmer weather – as in…in the ’40’s – it’s more comfortable for all concerned to have it done, some of it involving porches and such. So I’m surrounded by banging, scraping, dust and fumes.
I even had a long post on the Nashville trip that I never finished…but probably should. So later on that. The books read pile is getting higher. The things that I’m amazed and intrigued by (in various different senses) pile is getting higher…included that are names like Braxton, Burke and Barak. But I figure there’s enough being said on that by wiser people, so I’ll just talk about…the theatah.
A few weeks ago, I read this piece by Terry Teachout, a review of two plays, including one of the productions of the touring Acting Company, Moby Dick Rehearsed.

Founded in 1972 by John Houseman and Margot Harley, the Acting Company gives promising young actors and actresses a chance to appear in high-quality professional productions that tour throughout the U.S. Kevin Kline, Patti LuPone and David Ogden Stiers are its best-known alumni, which speaks well for its track record. The sets are simple but good, the repertory highbrow. (I first saw Jean Anouilh’s “Antigone,” for instance, in an Acting Company production directed by Alan Schneider that came to Kansas City, Mo., in 1978.) The company wraps up its tours in New York instead of launching them there, which is why I’ve never reviewed any of its shows. This season, though, it hit the ground running at Connecticut’s Fairfield University, close enough to Manhattan for me to drive up and catch “Moby-Dick — Rehearsed.” I was greatly impressed.

First performed in London in 1955, Orson Welles’s blank-verse adaptation of Herman Melville’s novel is a product of his wilderness years, the period when the creator of “Citizen Kane” had become a pariah in Hollywood. Though he started out as a stage director, Welles later became drunk on the possibilities of the silver screen and never returned to the stage in earnest, preferring to make independent films on an increasingly frayed shoestring. “Moby-Dick — Rehearsed” was to be one of his rare midlife ventures into the medium that won him his first fame. Never a fluent writer, Welles was an editor of near-genius, and here he uses that skill to create a surprisingly postmodern piece of lyric theater.

The setting is not the Pequod but the near-bare stage of an American theater circa 1890, and the characters are not sailors but members of a touring troupe that is reading through a new stage version of the saga of Captain Ahab (Seth Duerr) and the Great White Whale. In Welles’s hands this conceit is not coy but startlingly effective: The outlines of “Moby-Dick” emerge bit by bit out of the idle chatter of a rehearsal, and by intermission the actors, who at first had their doubts about the project, are swept up in the task at hand.

Hmm…I thought. I wonder if they will be coming anywhere near this place? So I checked, and lo and behold..Monday…March 17…Muncie…Be there!

So Katie and I were.

It was marvelous. Just as Terry says, the acting is fine, the sets, lighting and sound are evocative,  the expressionistic turn of the second act is illuminating and moving. I admit that Moby Dick is one of those Great Books I’ve Never Read (David read it in 8th grade. Does that count?), although I knew the plot and the general themes, but this production broke the thing apart and pulled it back together in a revelatory fashion and one could not help thinking, over and over, “What is my battle? Whom am I fighting? Why? And who am I bringing down with me?”

The first act was a little slow – actually it was the second half of the first act – and our enjoyment was hampered by the fact that where we were sitting – about 15 rows back, it was just a little hard to hear. And don’t tell me it was just because of old age. Katie was straining, too, okay?  But for the second act, we moved right down to the second row, which improved the experience a lot.  All the acting was wonderful, full-bodied, evocative. I had hoped, for Katie,  it would be a good experience in the power of theater beyond the frantic belting out of tunes (while miked, of course)…and it was.

It was an unfortunately small crowd down there at Ball State – no more than 150 people, I’d say, and shockingly few of them were students. I suppose I assumed that this would be a natural for an English or Drama class requirement or even extra credit, but apparently not. As we left, one of the few students there remarked to his companion, “I’ve never seen anything like that before…”

And he meant it in a good way, to be sure.

The Acting Company’s tour schedule is here – they end up in NYC for several performances in May. Their other production this season is The Tempest.And for The Kids – here’s the MySpace page!