Family Theater: Moby Dick

Family Theater presents Celeste Home, Dane Clark, and Henry Hull. The Future of that work in collaboration with Family Theater Incorporated brings you Henry Hull as Captain Ahab and Dane Clark as Ishmael in Herman Melville's familiar classic Moby Dick to introduce the drama, Your Hostess Celeste Home.

Thank you Gene. When the Good Ship Highlander weighed anchor in New York for Liverpool in 1837, it was indeed a momentous and fortunate event in the history of American literature. But it was then the LaLad of 17 set out upon the eight years of seafaring that were to take him to the faraway reaches of the seven seas.

This young man was Herman Melville, who began and ended his 72 years in New York, and with his writing, built a lasting monument to America's literary genius. Of his eight successful works, the seventh, alive with Melville's sense of beauty and of terror, was titled Moby Dick.

In recounting the story of Moby Dick the White Whale, Melville inspires the longing for and respectful awe of the sea in each generation. And now with sincere pleasure I invite you to listen to Dane Clark as Ishmael recounting the fanatic and tragic hunt of Henry Hill's Captain Ahab for Moby Dick the White Whale.

It is now weeks as the Nantucket Whale Ship Pequod turned south from her Massachusetts and aboard her the ship and crew has settled down to the monumental monotony of a ship's routine. A monotony that wells the crew into one mind, one forced to be driven by the words of its captain.

A monotony that finds relief in endless speculation about the days to come, and often as the sinking sun changes the deep blue water to evening's grave, their talk becomes graver, one of whispers among small clusters of men, of men, forward to the crew of the Pequod who have yet to see their captain, even now the