When people first find out about Tim Scott’s new adaptation of the Herman Melville epic “Moby-Dick,” they’re usually curious about how he’s going to portray the whale onstage.
But for this version of the 150-year-old adventure aboard the Pequod, it’s the music that drives the drama.
“We use music to evoke the ocean, we use music to evoke chasing the whale. We use music for lots of things; for the wind and the atmosphere,” he says.
Scott, who produced, wrote, and directed “Moby Dick: a Sea Shanty,” says the briny refrains played an essential role on a whaling ship — and the lyrics for a tune called “Spanish Ladies” are even quoted in Melville's book.
In Scott’s show, which runs through April 19 at Musical Theater Heritage at Crown Center, the old songs are themselves like a character in the play.
“People know the songs ‘Drunken Sailor’ and ‘Blow the Man Down,’ and they were meant to be rhythmic,” Scott says. “They were meant to be evocative of pulling through the ocean on boats.”
The songs set the pace for work on the high seas, and they boosted morale and distracted sailors from harsh conditions while hauling ropes or raising sails.
“You would get off a ship like the Pequod, descend into the water in a whaling boat, and then it's basically a rowboat rowing out to chase this whale,” Scott says. “So the music is very workmanlike.”
Hundreds of whaling ships set sail from New England in the 1800s to hunt sperm whales, which can weigh up to 45 tons and measure more than 50 feet in length. Melville, who spent four years aboard whaling vessels in the Pacific Ocean, wrote it was “a brutal, dangerous, and epic battle.”
“It's just like when you go fishing,” Scott says. “So, when you catch a fish, the fish starts to run.”
“But when you harpoon a whale, this 3,000-pound beast starts to run and you are in a boat hooked to it,” Scott says. “And so you fly across the ocean.”
In the story, Captain Ahab, the charismatic leader of the Pequod, is driven by a consuming obsession to hunt down the white whale called Moby Dick. It comes as more of an inevitability than a plot twist, but Ahab’s unholy quest leads ship and crew to their doom.
“I thought what was really interesting to explore was how one person could drum up so much passion and hatred,” Scott says. “And that's really what Ahab does when he gets all of these men to commit to chasing this whale.”
Melodies that survived centuries
Fritz Hutchison, the play’s music director, leads the four-piece folk band that keeps the action moving. The songs, passed down over the years by sailors on the open seas, are at the heart of the show.
“I've had a lot of fun sitting with all this source material and adapting it and sort of just, like, seeing what it can do,” Hutchison says.
The production includes Hutchison on guitar and banjo, along with Kansas City musicians Betse Ellis on fiddle, Andrew Willson on the accordion and Brian Padavic on bass.
“These are very old melodies,” Hutchison says. “They're so strong because of what they've survived, like through time and adaptation and interpretation, that they can now seemingly withstand anything.”
One of Hutchison's favorite tunes, "Blood Red Roses,” has a somber tone that foreshadows the Pequod’s journey — played early in the show, just as the crew is setting off.
“The elephant in the room is your potential doom going out on a journey like that,” he says.
Hutchison adapted about a dozen of these nautical folk songs for the show, many of which have a traditional style.
“But then we start to sort of, like, pull it apart and make it less traditional sounding and more purely emotive, of like: ‘We're going to go kill a giant animal,’” he says.
Through the several years that Scott has been pursuing this leviathan of a play, he says it’s been fun to explore inventive ways to bring music to the stage.
“This project has given us an opportunity to step a little bit outside of traditional musical theater, and it’s pretty exciting for us,” Scott says. “But at the end of the day, we're just hoping it's an entertaining piece of theater.”
“Moby Dick: a Sea Shanty” runs through April 19 at Musical Theater Heritage at Crown Center, 2450 Grand Blvd., Suite 301, Kansas City, Missouri 64108. For more information visit the Musical Theater Heritage website.
