Acting as high school students doing a musical couldn’t have been pulled off better than by those who worked on the Stuyvesant Theater Community (STC) studio musical this year.
Unlike past studio musicals, “Moby Dick! The Musical” was held in the cafeteria on Thursday, January 31 and Friday, February 1. Directed by senior Hannah Temkin and junior Dylan Tramontin, the musical is based on the classic novel by Herman Melville with music and lyrics by Robert Longden, Martin Koch and Hereward Kaye.
“With this studio musical, it’s a made-from-scratch kind of thing. It’s very ghetto, like a bunch of school kids just put together some milk crates and hockey sticks,” Temkin said. “With this sort of humor and this type of silliness, it wouldn’t have the same charm to it without the roughness.”
The musical begins with an enthused cast of schoolgirls entering from the back of the cafeteria. In order to save their bankrupt boarding school, the girls decide to have a “big fat fundraiser” because they are determined not to return to their dull lives back home. Agreeing to put together Ishmael’s (junior Ella Gibson) musical, the girls and their boyfriends become the crew, with the headmistress (senior Billy Ferrer in drag) as Captain Ahab.
The nervous Ishmael, also the narrator, sings about her love for the sea and her passion for adventure. On both nights, Gibson, despite her petite stature, took the stage with her amazing and well-projected voice, enchanting the audience. Though gender ambiguity is a prominent theme in this musical, Gibson passes up the outlandish cross-dressing donned by many of her costars, and instead presents us with a distinctly feminine Ishmael.
We meet most of the crew—including the Native American Tashtego (sophomore Clio Contogenis), first-mate Starbuck (senior Kasey Huizinga), second-mate Stubb (junior Minday Nam), “guy with the funny accent” Pierre (sophomore Justy Kosek), and Pip (sophomore Marley Lindsey)—of the literary ship, The Pequod, in “Old Nantucket.” Most notably, Nam makes the dim-witted nature of her character apparent to the audience by using three fingers instead of two while indicating her status as second mate. To add to the humor, Stubb portrays her character as having an upbeat, naive mentality.
At Spouter’s Inn, Peter Coffin (senior Ezra Glenn) tells Ishmael, who has been looking for affordable lodgings, that the only option available is to share a room with the allegedly cannibalistic Queequeg (junior Yara Ganem)—which, in Peter’s opinion, is better than sharing a room with a drunken Christian, in reference to Mapple (junior Matthew Gottesman).
Ishmael fretfully goes to meet his roommate, only to find that Queequeg is extremely strange, rubbing noses with Ishmael in an act of friendship. To add to the masculinity of her character as well as physical humor, Ganem sports a noticeable bulge in her underwear. In the songs “Primitive” and “Bones,” due to Ganem’s low, brassy alto, several lines were inaudible.
Conflict arises when Elijah (sophomore Justy Kosek) prophesizes the death of one of the crewmembers in “At Sea One Day.” Kosek, as an endearing eccentric, uses a high-pitched and strained accent to send Elijah’s warning to Ishmael and Queequeg.
In the meantime, Esta (sophomore Kyla Alterman) reads a letter written by her husband Ahab, who has been out at sea for three years, and longs for her husband in “A Man Happens.” Alterman makes extensive over-the-top actions throughout, romping on the floor on her hands and knees and lifting her dress up provocatively.
Ferrer, an STC veteran doing his first studio production, plays Ahab, the deranged seaman who has lost his right leg (to the great white whale Moby Dick). In the number “Can’t Keep Out the Night,” Ferrer’s embellished body movements, similar to that of Alterman, contributed greatly to the humor. He used snappy movements, kicking his legs around and making full use of the stage.
During the song “Love Will Always,” the chemistry between sophomore Marley Lindsey’s Pip (who looks up to Ahab as a father) and Ferrer’s Ahab is clear—the two are a natural pair, holding hands and dancing, and sending the audience into fits of laughter. In “Deck Dance,” Lindsey illustrates Pip’s free-spirited character as he tears off his shirt to reveal a tight shirt with bright sequins. Lindsey portrays his character as a rising pop star, just as eager for the audience’s approval as he is for Ahab’s approval.
As Ahab pushes madly for Moby Dick to be found despite a storm, during which Pip is blown overboard, Starbuck contemplates mutiny in “Whale of a Tale.” In this number, Huizinga’s only flaw is that she is perhaps too professional to portray her schoolgirl character. Her gorgeous voice fills the acoustically lacking cafeteria, and at the end of her number, though the rest of the crew is unwilling to risk their lives to make her captain, the audience is.
The music ended with the entrance of Moby Dick, ingeniously depicted with a plethora of large white umbrellas held by the cast.
“[Moby] Dick! was very satisfying,” freshman Sam Furnival said. “It touched deep inside me. The climax alone was worth the price,” he said jokingly, in reference to the abundance of sexual innuendos in the musical, affectionately called “Dick.”
Despite being a studio production, the technical aspects of the musical were carried out well.
Everything on stage was audible and well lit. The band, conducted by sophomore Alex Jaffe, played at the perfect volume and was always in sync with the cast, which is particularly impressive since cast and band only had three days of rehearsal together. Despite consisting of only a piano (senior Sanghee Chung), drumset (senior Natan Last), guitar (senior Matt Rosenthal) and bass (senior Billy Yuan), the catchy score and lively melodies they played provided the cast with a myriad of opportunities to steal the show.
Senior Boris Jacobson said, “The ridiculous parts were the funniest parts, like the parts that weren’t originally written out in the script.”
“The directors really capitalized on the actors’ talents and personalities, as well as on the great one-liners the play has to offer in this production,” junior Robert Stevenson said.
Though based on a notoriously mammoth and cumbersome text, “Moby Dick! The Musical” is considerably light fare. Though the novel’s premise, that you can never avenge yourself against an animal, is essentially lost in the show’s sloppy final minutes, the musical’s premise, that young people can create art with little more than an eye for the absurd and enthusiasm, remains intact.