Just fyi: There is a Moby Dick musical (my son saw it earlier this month, in fact). There’s also a Moby Dick opera.
Can you imagine how long that must be? Possibly even as long as Hadestown felt.
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Comics I Don't Understand 
I’ve heard about the opera, indeed, must have heard some of it on the radio. But what I remember is not the performance but the surrounding discussion, covering e.g. what to do about special effects. But most notably, the pov character is not named Ishmael. Which is fair enough, since when the narrator says Call me Ishmael he is not giving his name, just characterizing his situation. Still, anybody discussing the book normally does call him Ishmael, and says things like “Then when Ishmael confers with Starbuck, …”. Even though Starbuck would not be saying “Hey Ishmael, what do you think?” — since that’s not his name.
I did not know that, never having gotten further in the book than “Call me Ishmael.”
My cousin read it through. Twice. I think he’s listed in the Guinness Book of World Records.
Preview / promo video https://youtu.be/fhnUmkcjWqU
”
Duration & Language
Approximately 2 hours 40 minutes including intermission.
Performed in English with English supertitles.
“
Leaving out a novel-length discussion of cetology from the source material probably shortens the length somewhat.
DemetriosX, without the cetology, all you’ve got is “Call me Ismael. Which isn’t actually my name. It’s complicated. Ahab, which really was his name, really hated this whale called Moby Dick, which wasn’t really his name, but Timothy just didn’t sound scary enough. And anyway, it didn’t end well.”
” … then all collapsed, and the great shroud of the sea rolled on as it rolled five thousand years ago.”
I recently reread MOBY DICK for the first time in about fifty years (willingly, both times) and enjoyed it both times, but even more this time. Though I’ll admit my favorite part turned out to the early scenes in Bedford, before they even went to sea.
But I’m old enough to accept that I won’t get around to reading it a third time in this lifetime, so I put it out in my Little Library, and eventually someone took it.
I had to look up what “supertitles” were.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surtitles
I suppose “supertitles” would also apply to the dialogue text Amazon plasters over actors’ faces when opening credits are playing at the bottom of the screen.
We went to see Moby Dick on New Year’s Eve! The first 2 hours were pretty good. We should have bolted at intermission! The second half starts with 20 minutes of boredom about Pip the Cabin Boy, wanders aimlessly for another half hour (3 years in ship time, which is what it felt like), then finally gets down to the battle. They had no idea how to stage this part, and it made no sense.
The blubber cutting in the first act was well done. If they can apply it to the 2nd, the show might go somewhere.
My son saw it as part of a theatre subscription. He said it was okay, but we shouldn’t bother buying tickets if it came to Broadway.
This looks like a job for SUPERTITLE!
I think the actual subtitle of Moby Dick is “or, The Whale”, which is certainly subpar compared to “Moby Dick”.
If Moby Dick had a supertitle it would be “MOBY F*****G DICK!!!”
Billybob, I sometimes wish the captioning I get were more like what you describe. I get the captioning permanently at that almost-bottom position, and when there are opening credits as well, neither is readable. I know at one time there was more flexibility from the source in positioning of closed captioning. Hey, they even would put it near the heads of different characters to indicate who is speaking.
Bill – “Call me Ismael. Which isn’t actually my name. It’s complicated. Ahab, which really was his name, really hated this whale called Moby Dick, which wasn’t really his name,
He didn’t say his name was Ismael, just to call him that. Maybe it’s his middle name and he likes it better than Ahab or he just doesn’t want to give his real name? :-)
Never read the book either. I realized one day that I thought I was well read – but I was not. I was only well “know all the stories from hearing about them and their significance”.
In 10th grade English we were suppose to read Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar”. I did not read it. In English class my future senior year boyfriend (not Robert) and I were already friends and in discussing reading the play I said that I had not bothered to read it. He was then shocked as I would raise my hand and answer the teacher’s questions. He could not believe that I just knew the story without reading it. (And no I had not seen the play on TV either.)
Senior year in college I had to read some book and write a report on it. The morning it was due I was in the college library writing the report. I had not read the book. Robert, by then we were dating, could not believe I would write a book report without reading it – read first chapter, last chapter, one in the middle and start writing. Got my usual B – good enough for me.
Oh, the fellow dancing in the picture is a minister, I can tell by his collar tails that are in motion in the picture. (And if his neckcloth was black instead of white, it would mean that he was military man.)
In my mother’s effects I came across a book report I wrote about Fielding’s Tom Jones. I know I hadn’t read it. But since I’ve read it since, I know the book report was accurate and actually pretty good, and I have no idea how I did that.
Could you have known the story of Julius Caesar from history? Although it’s classed as a Tragedy instead of a History, it’s far more accurate than most of the History plays. Bill took the story from Plutarch’s Lives of the Greeks and Romans. I read the play when I was super young, since it had been assigned to my oldest brother.
It’s New Bedford, not Bedford. I’m from there.
Talk of this being a minister (vicar, parson etc) prancing in front of a lady leads me to repeat a joke I read in The Times today regarding Nicholas Parsons, a much-liked UK radio & TV personality and actor who died yesterday aged 96 after a short illness. He presented the BBC radio show Just A Minute for 51 years, from its inception in 1967 until the most recent recording in September 2019 (it’s popular around the world, including lots of fans in India, and some of you may have heard it).
The joke is from The Two Ronnies, a BBC TV show from the early 1970s. It is ever so mildly Arloesque, I guess. *Ahem*.
Ronnie Corbett: “In the next sketch, I interview a lady who likes Nicholas Parsons.”
Ronnie Barker: “And I interview a Parson who likes knickerless ladies.”
Ho ho. As my real first name is Nicholas I guess I should not promote such jokes. (“Nicholas girls should not climb trees”, and so forth. Knickerless Copperknickers, too).
As he was eternally polite, debonair, poised, perfectly dressed and posh-sounding, it is hard to credit that Parsons spent his teenage years as an apprentice marine mechanical engineer in Clydebank in the Scottish shipbuilding industry
RIP Nicholas Parsons
without repetition, hesitation, or deviation…
I’ve read Moby Dick, and though it took forever to get through, the book’s climax was insanely good.
I got an A on my high school essay about Tale of Two Cities. I never read it because my English teacher turned EVERYTHING into a chore — really, sometimes they just suck all the enjoyment out of a book — but my cousin (who went to a different school) had just read it and gave me a good recap during a long car trip.
My point being, ignatzz, maybe somebody had given you a good recap.
That guy better watch what he’s doing with that stick…he could put an eye out with that thing.
ignatzz = of course I knew most of the story and most of the stories of the other Shakespeare plays as I had heard same talked as they are part of the popular culture.