A sell-out show is failing to reel people in in a Cumbrian town – and the production company behind it is asking people to dip their toe in the water and buy a ticket!
Maybe Dick is billed as a new parody of Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick.
Created by the Lincolnshire-based Hambledon Productions, it is due to hit the stage at the Penrith Playhouse on Wednesday.
Part of a nationwide tour, the parody, a co-production with New Bedford’s Whaling Museum in Massachusetts in the USA, had a sellout run at dozens of venues already – but is struggling in Penrith, its only Cumbrian date.
It is written and performed by John Hewer. He said: “You don’t need to have read or seen Moby Dick.
“The story-telling comes second to joke-telling, even though we’ve managed to stay faithful to the book and the original characters.
“Audiences are crying out for pure entertainment; I think there’s an increasingly stronger wish to sporadically switch off from both the mundane and the gravity of current affairs and such, and that it’s important that there are shows and comedic works that offer the chance to do that.”
