Moby Dick – Plexus Polaire / Barbican, London

MimeLondon is back! And first up is Moby Dick at the Barbican, a wonderfully creative production which pushes us to consider where the boundaries of mime may be.

Back to That Old Question: What Is Mime, Anyway?

We’ve been here before, dear readers. I first came across the London International Mime Festival in 2022, and wondered where it had been all my life. In 2024, I believe as a result of funding changes, the festival took on a different, curated identity as MimeLondon. And MimeLondon is back on for 2025, bringing innovative companies and productions to an enthusiastic London audience.

And yet… While I generally love what I see as part of this diverse festival, I also often find myself pondering the question of what exactly mime is. We’re not talking Marcel Marceau here, to be clear, and that’s not what I would expect. A couple of key phrases from the MimeLondon website are “physical and visual theatre” and “essentially wordless”. Previous productions we’ve discussed here on the blog have used puppetry, dance, sign language, movement, live visual effects and more to tell stories. Sometimes there’s dialogue, but it’s not the main thing.

I was a little surprised, then, by Moby Dick. A work by French-Norwegian company Plexus Polaire, Moby Dick transforms Herman Melville’s famously dense book into 85 minutes of thrilling theatre. There are lots of classic MimeLondon elements: puppet, music, projections, unbridled creativity. But do you know what else there is a lot of? Dialogue, pulled straight from the novel.* Does it matter? Let’s see.

*I assume. I’ve never read it so the only bit I can guarantee is verbatim from the book is the famous opening line “Call me Ishmael.”

Moby Dick

Ah, Moby Dick. Herman Melville’s classic tale of obsession and vengeance. Captain Ahab pitting himself against the forces of nature and the great white whale. After a brief musical opening, our boy Ishmael starts things off with a sizeable monologue to set the scene about life at sea. From the outset, there’s an interesting blend of puppets and actors, and puppets at different scales. It opens up a lot of potential in terms of storytelling, from Ahab’s interactions with seemingly pint-sized (but nonetheless scary) skeletons, to portraying obsession through the use of multiple puppets at once. This is where Plexus Polaire are very smart – they have really thought about what an actor can do differently, and what a puppet can do differently, and used the strengths of both.

As the story progresses, we get some action scenes. Whaling, even when it’s done at scale with little rowboats on sticks, is hard to watch. There’s a particular scene I had to avert my eyes from: if you see Moby Dick you’ll know what I mean. When the whales aren’t being hunted and are swimming peacefully, they’re beautiful.

But whales and humans can’t coexist peacefully, at least when spermaceti (or sperm whale oil) is at stake. And the great white whale in particular can’t exist peacefully while Ahab is on its trail, seeking revenge. Events, therefore, come to a head. I’m not going to spoil it just in case, like me, you’ve never read the book. But it’s a very definite conclusion.

So what do we think about the production overall? Like I say, I’m not sure it was mime per se, given the centrality of the dialogue. But it was really creative, and enjoyable, storytelling. The projections, music and especially puppets took the audience to places we wouldn’t have reached through more traditional theatrical means. Overall that makes up for some slightly weaker points, like an overly gruff Captain Ahab voice that had me straining to make out a lot of lines. If you have a ticket or can get your hands on a return, I think you will enjoy it. I look forward to seeing what else MimeLondon has in store this year!

Salterton Arts Review’s rating: 3.5/5

Moby Dick on until 25 January 2025