Writer: John Hewer
Director: Bruce Knight
Writer and performer John Hewer’s one-man comedy Maybe Dick is a twin love letter. To Moby-Dick, Herman Melville’s 1851 novel of revenge, retribution, and an elusive white whale. But also, to British film and TV comedy and comedians from the last six decades. Think an entire bank holiday weekend’s worth of Carry On films, condensed to a nostalgic hour-and-a-bit, fronted by one of the Two Ronnies, and set on the bridge of a rust-tinted whaling ship. Hewer is a zealously hard-working performer, plays a mean concertina, and can even ventriloquise with a puppet seagull called Steven.
Thankfully, the cringe-making homophobic taunts, fat jokes, and the relentless groping of female characters that characterise the worst of the Carry On franchise are absent here. The smut, milkman jests, and dick jokes most definitely remain. Among the seemingly inexorable cascade of groan-inducing puns, smirking double-entendres, and bawdy visual gags there are just enough comic pearls to make the evening pass.
“Call Me Ishmael”, our narrator, has an urge to go to sea aboard a whaling vessel. “I enjoy working my passage,” he tells us. A visit to Nantucket, traditional capital of the whaling industry and home of “Nantucket fried chicken” sees Ishmael secure a berth on the whaler Pequod. “How long will you be at sea?” he asks. “As long as you are on land” comes the response. The quartermaster Pele (“he hasn’t mastered the other three-quarters yet” we hear) warns him of the ship’s mysterious captain, Ahab. “Better to sail with a moody good captain than a laughing bad one” Ishmael concludes. The ship is headed south as “sailing across the Atlantic would be a mistake of titanic proportions”.
The Pequod’s eclectic crew includes Starbuck, who speaks with a New Jersey accent and supplies a dozen different kinds of coffee to his shipmates. Father Mapple speaks with the Scots Ulster accent of an evangelical priest. “On our last ship we had Italian pastor” Ishmael muses. “I’m going down below,” Mapple says. “It’s probably your age” someone who speaks like upper-class comic actor Leslie Philips retorts. The ship’s carpenter is essentially Ronnie Corbett complete with that comedian’s trademark “fork handles” joke.
Hewer’s Captain Ahab juts his chin forward, pulls on his trouser braces, and speaks more like Jeremy Irons than Jeremy Irons does. “I won’t rest until I have dick” Ahab intones, and he means it. Unexpectedly perhaps for such a ribald piece, Hewer captures the man’s fervent desire to find and destroy his nemesis with something approaching pathos. Anticipate some audience interaction and buy a stiff drink in advance.
Runs until 23 March 2024
The Reviews Hub Score.
Carry on Ahab.
