Okay, let me begin by noting how much I hate and loathe football. It is a worthless waste of effort, a false religion which in the end is little more than war porn. Americans treat football like a religion, in part to avoid having to think about how un-Christ-like they are while calling themselves Christians.
That having been said, I loved and adored The Unsackable Man, a musical comedy set in the world of the NFL. But wait! Let us note the weirdest and most wonderful thing about this show. Well, maybe not either the most weird nor most wonderful, but pretty foundational.
It is re-telling of Moby Dick.
And I don't mean that in a vague kind of way. In this tale, Captain Ahab (Jonica Patella) of the Buccaneers has spent their entire career in football trying to bring down a former best friend, Wally White (Nick Salas) the oft-worshipped quarterback who has never been successfully "sacked." The musical begins with the recruitment of Queegqueeg (Zeke Jones) and his best friend Ishmael (Larry Grimes) by Coach Starbuck (Steve Alloway). So far, so good. Nice parallels, am I right?
But let me make it clear--this actually captures the heart of Herman Melville's novel. Writer/composer Dan Waldkirch somehow created an hour-long musical full of charm and laughs but which also somehow captured something real from the book! Then this fantastic cast (including Laura Van Yck, Tosca Minotto, Dekland Jones, and Gina Rizzo Bishop) with director Denise Devin brought it to glorious life. It should not have worked. Somehow, though, it does. A big part of that is how it captures something vital, usually overlooked or misunderstood in versions Moby Dick proper. Ahab may be insane, but Ahab is also great. Ahab feels a personal slight and that spurs his revenge, yes, but there is more to it than that. A lot more, which helps make the original tale so compelling. It has never been the Whale Ahab chiefly longed to strike down, but something behind the whale, something that spoils and ruins men's lives in some fundamental way. So it is with our Ahab, who will not allow betrayal and cruelty stand. Nor should we.
As of this writing, The Unsackable Man has closed at Zombie Joe's Underground Theatre Group in NoHo. I hope very much one way or another we shall see it mounted once more. I vote for the Hollywood Fringe Festival next year. Let us all hope.
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