Shows M

MOBY DICK Book and Lyrics by Robert Longden : Music by Hereward Kaye and Robert Longden : Additional lyrics by Hereward Kaye : The authors would like to reluctantly acknowledge interference from Russell Ochocki and Cameron Mackintosh. Picadilly Theatre, 17 March, 1992 This is a fun show about a girls' school performing Moby Dick as a musical fundraiser. SYNOPSIS The girls of St. Godley's School are in trouble! Money for the school has run out and the place will have to close. Leave it to these resourceful girls, and their unflappable headmistress (played by a man in drag), to come up with a plan to keep the school afloat. Using whatever they can find at hand, the girls mount an original production: a musical version of Moby Dick, featuring their headmistress in the coveted role of Captain Ahab. A cult-favorite in London in the 1990s, Moby Dick! The Musical has been re-conceived for an American sensibility. As Melville rolls in his grave, our spirited girls run roughshod over the classic as they carry on with their presentation. Warning: this is NOT your ordinary musical version of Moby Dick! What The Rocky Horror Show does to late night horror movies, Moby Dick! The Musical does to Herman Melville! As the girls perform their adaptation of the classic novel, they come to have an appreciation of education and camaraderie - NOT! Filled with double and triple entendre, and more goofy humour than you can imagine, the St. Godley School presentation of Moby Dick! The Musical is guaranteed to make your audiences laugh in spite of themselves. STORY In order to save their bankrupt school that’s seen better days, the girls of St. Godley’s Academy for Young Ladies decide to put on a musical version of Moby Dick. The highly comic, satirical romp through this age-old mariner’s tale that follows proves to be a world of endless, funny double entendres and wonderful, pastiche company numbers. As the play opens, the scene is one of general chaos – Ishmael (all of the characters are referred to by the names the play in the story of Moby Dick), sits at the piano composing a song. Pip, the school’s security guard has been gagged and tied to a chair as other students play basketball and throw paper airplanes. The Janitor enters and asks Ishmael to start choir practice. Ishmael plays as the school’s headmistress enters. After a rousing rendition of the “School Hymn”, she informs her students that due to bankruptcy, the school will close at the end of the term. The girls, determined not to return to their horrible, boring lives outside St. Godley’s vow to save it. They decide they need to throw a “big fat fundraiser” and Ishmael offers her newly penned musical version of Moby Dick. The girls quickly get on board with the idea and the Headmistress passes out parts, making herself Captain Ahab (“Moby Dick”). By the end of this company number, we are at opening night of the show. A nervous Ishmael takes the stage and opens the musical (“I Live and Breathe”). She sings of her passion for the sea, the magic of the water, and her love of adventure. She lands, at the end of her song, on the docks of Nantucket where we meet the crew of the Pequod, a whaling ship recently returned from a hunting trip gone bad as Captain Ahab lost his leg (and quite a bit more) to a savage whale (“In Old Nantucket”). Finally, Ishmael, who’s been looking for affordable lodgings for the evening finds an available bed (and a curious bunkmate) at the Spouter Inn. Meanwhile, Esta, Ahab’s wife waits fretfully for her husband’s safe return (“A Man Happens”). He arrives, accompanied by Pip and a chest overflowing with gold (“Ahab’s Homecoming”) and breaks the bad news to her – not only has he lost his leg to the rogue whale Moby Dick, but his manhood as well. He will not be able to father her children. Esta inappropriately giggles when he reveals his ivory stump and the other guests at

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