The Whale

"Adinolfi transforms a tiny stage into both the sea-locked world of the Pequod's decks and the vast, unfathomable sea itself."
- Rebecca Mead, The New Yorker

"This is an intense, poetic reaction to Melville's novel, created using a heightened theatricality and a set that would look at home in a gallery."
- Diane Dubois, The Scotsman, UK

"When Moby Dick itself rises up from nowhere with fearsome power, it is easy to forget this is all in the mind, and you can almost taste the salt as you drown in the deep waters of Adinolfi's imagination."
- Jeremy Hodges, The Daily Mail, UK

Moby Dick, by Herman Melville tells the tale of Captain Ahab and his maniacal pursuit of the ever-elusive White Whale. In Concrete Temple's The Whale, the often over-looked Sub-Sub-Librarian is featured, and it's he who plays not only Ishmael and Captain Ahab but Moby Dick himself.

Using only his body, voice, and an extraordinary collection of hand-crafted and rigged props to create life on a whale ship Adinolfi, a dancer and actor by training, puts into service a variety of storytelling traditions. The effect of one man embodying this enormous literary epic in 60 minutes (using Melville's text) is simultaneously playful and profound.

The visual and physical nature of the work makes The Whale a unique theatrical experience, and though The Whale was not conceived of as a show for children, last year it was performed for 400 4th graders, and they loved it. "A great soundscape, carefully worked movement & faithful quotation from the novel."
- Philip Fisher, British Theatre Guide