Irish company makes ‘Moby Dick’ a one-man theater piece

The Irish husband-and-wife team of Conor Lovett and Judy Hegarty Lovett have spent the last 14 years traveling the world with their stage adaptations of works by Samuel Beckett - not the oft-produced plays like “Waiting for Godot’’ or “Endgame,’’ but the lesser-known prose works like “Molloy’’ and “Malone Dies.’’ She directs. He performs. Their spare, intimate productions play close to the bone: just one man on a bare, dimly lit stage, recalling his story as if it’s the last night on Earth and the mere telling of the tale will keep the final flame burning.
This singular dedication to the great 20th-century existentialist has earned the pair and their company, Gare St. Lazare Players Ireland, a worldwide reputation as master interpreters of the Nobel Prize-winning playwright. It has also won them the blessing of the notoriously protective Beckett estate. “Beckett is a song we know how to sing,’’ Hegarty Lovett says matter-of-factly.
Recently they have added to their repertoire a different song entirely. They are currently touring the United States with, yes, a pair of Beckett pieces, but also their one-man production of “Moby Dick,’’ Herman Melville’s sprawling 19th-century novel, in which the crazed Captain Ahab and his crew chase the great white whale across three oceans. This week, ArtsEmerson brings their “Moby Dick’’ to the Paramount Center’s Jackie Liebergott Black Box, where it opens tomorrow and runs through Nov. 12.