Interludes

THE HANGOVER REPORT – Robert Wilson’s avant-garde production of MOBY DICK cracks open the Melville classic, dropping viewers into another dimension

• By drediman
• May 1, 2026
• No Comments

When the legendary Robert Wilson passed away last year, the art world lost one of the indisputable giants of avant-garde theater. An uncompromising auteur who spanned and was equally at home across performing arts genres (opera, experimental theater, etc.), his bold productions have become the stuff of lore — e.g., the original production of Phillip Glass’s seminal Einstein on the Beach — helping to establish an aesthetic practice completely and distinctly his own. Indeed, there’s no question that you’re watching a Wilson production — many of which have graced BAM’s stages over the years — with their invariably saturated lighting, precise Kabuki-like movements, heightened silent film expressions, clownish vaudevillian antics, and so forth.

Fans of Wilson’s work and legacy won’t want to miss the opportunity to catch his stage adaptation of Herman Melville’s literary masterpiece Moby Dick, the last full project he mounted before his unfortunate passing. Originally created for Düsseldorfer Schauspielhaus, the production is currently docked at the BAM Howard Gilman Opera House only through the weekend. Bridging one cultural icon to another, the staging creates a coiled dialogue between the director’s own obsessive staging techniques and that of Ahab’s relentless quest to hunt down the famously elusive titular whale. Bringing propulsive energy to Wilson’s iconic stage stylings — which present themselves in a parade of striking stage pictures — are the incorporation of kinetic video projections and British singer-songwriter Anna Calvi’s eclectic indie-rock score, which is brilliantly played by a live band in the opera house’s pit. At times driving and rollicking, and at other times tender and introspective, Calvi’s musical contributions — in concert with spoken text lifted directly from Melville’s novel — bring an array of textures to Wilson’s relentlessly intense visual imagery, resulting in bespoke and varied music theater pageantry. 

Narrated by a nameless old man — perhaps a stand-in for either Melville or Wilson himself — the meticulously-performed production is more interested in metaphysically depicting the psychological states of its characters rather than presenting a cohesive regurgitation of the book’s narrative. As such, the interpretive staging, which operates by its own mysterious logic, cracks open the literary work, dropping viewers into a surreal and visually off-kilter dimension (what Wilson universe isn’t?) — at once minimalist yet spectacularly realized — that playfully contorts Melville’s stirring emotional and thematic concerns (e.g., Ahab is adventurously played by a woman), thankfully without distorting them beyond recognition. Again, attention must be paid to Calvi, whose songs are pitched to register on a viscerally human level, thereby instilling depth of feeling behind the deadpan stares.

RECOMMENDED

MOBY DICK
Off-Broadway, Performance
Brooklyn Academy of Music
1 hour, 40 minutes (without an intermission)
Through May 3