Playwright: Mat Smart; Music: Ethan Deppe
At: White Horse Theatre Co. at Theatre Building Chicago, 1225 W. Belmont
Phone: 773-327-5252; $20
Through: Sept. 16
BY SCOTT C. MORGAN
Keep Ishmael is a modern-day rock musical inspired by Herman Melville's novel Moby Dick. And it begins in Naperville, Ill. Sounds crazy, no?
Well, if you catch White Horse Theatre Company's world premiere of Keep Ishmael, you'll agree with that 'crazy' description.
Penned with plenty of youthful gusto by composer Ethan Deppe and playwright Mat Smart, Keep Ishmael attempts to put a joking gloss on Melville's examination of peoples' driving obsessions. The intentions are well-placed and the show has some genuinely comic bits, but Keep Ishmael is undone by its self-conscious smugness and schizophrenic shifts in tone, content and musical styles.
It's likely the authors were inspired by Urinetown: The Musical, one of this decade's great musicals that spoofs the genre with an unlikely subject matter while still honoring it with a strong social conscience. Keep Ishmael has elements of what made Urinetown great, but its writing and execution skills leave a lot to be desired.
Keep Ishmael starts with four disenchanted young adult friends toiling away in Naperville chain businesses.
There's frame-maker Izzy ( Nick Mills as the Ishmael character ) and personal trainer 'Q' ( Tawny Newsome ) as two friends who couldn't make the relationship commitment as fiancées. Izzy's coworker, A-Train ( Jonathan Wagner as the Capt. Ahab stand-in ) , is still obsessing over ex-girlfriend Nina ( Bridgid Titley ) , who dumped him to pursue a career working with the killer whale Shamu at San Diego's Sea World. Then there's the gay Starbuck ( Casey Campbell ) who works as an obsessive manager of, you guessed it, a Starbucks.
When each is fired on the same day, they all oddly heed an ad looking for tuna fishermen off the Pacific Coast. Sure enough, a mutinous A-Train then commandeers the ship for his deadly pursuit of the killer whale who stole his woman away.
For sheer oddity, Keep Ishmael is a fun but frequently frustrating exercise. Deppe's songs lack satisfying button endings, plus the rock-and-roll guitar sound ( with frequently unintelligible lyrics ) that establishes the show disappears for large swaths during the remainder of the production.
Smart's book takes great early potshots at a chain-store-filled Naperville and its magazine quality-of-life ranking status. Izzy and Q's struggle to find significant love and meaning amid the ennui of suburban sprawl has potential as a musical in itself ( especially in great songs like Best Kids in America and Words ) , but their relationship gets hijacked by the 'aren't we weird' antics of whale hunting and anachronistic boat captains dressed as pirates and going 'Arrrrh!'
At the very least, Keep Ishmael has a talented and eager cast that also includes the valuable ensemble contributions of Erin Myover, Jeremy Trager and Paul G. Miller. Director Evan Cabnet helms the ship with plenty of fun, but you long for more crazy and inventive visual gags to go with the hyperactive material.
Though not an unqualified success, Keep Ishmael does have a youthful vigor going for it. White Horse's willingness to tackle another brand-new musical after I Sing! is also commendable, even if the comic fun and strangeness of Keep Ishmael can't entirely hide its sometimes sloppy construction.
