BWW Reviews: Pony World's OR, THE WHALE Doesn't Engage

You're having a nightmare where you're taking a literature class examining "Moby Dick", it's discussion day and you haven't read the book. That's what it felt like watching Pony World Theatre Company's new production of "Or, The Whale". If there were correlations between the play and the Melville classic as advertised they were completely lost on me. So without all that foreknowledge (which their press release said was not necessary) all I got what a disjointed and drawn out look at several people's woes that ultimately had no real point.

Let me see if I can decipher the show for you since I didn't really get it myself. M (Sann Hall) is a phone worker for the 2010 US Census. She's very shy not all that good at her job. So one day she finds a copy of "Moby Dick" and she begins to open up by connecting with the people she is calling with extracurricular conversations and passages of the book. There's the lonely truck driver (J. Martin Dinn), the girl (Liza Curtiss) whose Mother has just died, the couple on the verge of divorce (Heather Persinger and Carter Rodriguez) the lonely shut in (Mark Fullerton) and let's not forget the astronaut who's become untethered from his space station (yeah that happened). And she tries to hide these conversations from her perky boss (Keiko Green) and the chatty IT Guy (Sean Patrick Taylor). And somehow all of these people are supposed to relate to the story of "Moby Dick" as M reads to them.

Now as I said, I've never read the book. I know enough about it that I hoped the show would make sense but alas I am a "Dummy". At least that's what the show writers think. They did a survey (it's a census, get it) of the audience as we came in to see who had read the book. About a third of the people had. Another third started it but never finished and the final third (which I was in) had not and according to their chart during the survey results presentation, my third were the "Dummies". Um, OK. Now the press information on this show says that the authors, Brendan Healy and K. Brian Neel, got together and read "Moby Dick" aloud and examined it thoroughly which eventually lead to this play. So I'm assuming with their in-depth knowledge of the book, the relationship between it and the characters in the play makes sense. But for us dummies, well, we weren't in on the private joke. My theater companion had some knowledge on the book and he saw some more connections but even with that insight he felt the show felt flat.

So without that insight at all are the stories at least interesting? Not really. It ultimately amounted to a morass of damaged people and the conveyance of their stories had no purpose and an unengaging (sort of) resolution. Plus the ending, the culmination of this whole journey, felt really contrived and cheesy and garnered a severe eye roll from me.

I can't say the performances were bad. The actors do what they can with the script but since I found the characters uninteresting then I found very little interesting in the portrayals. It's like an excellent speaker droning on about something uninteresting (like the US Census). You know they're good communicators but you just don't care. And ultimately the show was about as engaging as the US Census which is why I'm giving it a big fat NAH with my three letter rating system. It was close to getting the dreaded WTF but I gave points for the effort. But if you're going to go for this kind of somewhat experimental theater, have something relatable to say. But then, what do I know? I'm just a dummy.

"Or. The Whale" from Pony World Productions performs at North Seattle College through November 15th. For tickets or information visit them online at www.ponyworld.com.

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