I never thought I would get a chance to see this and I just did, I appreciate your notes on the show so much!!! Agreed that the mother and baby whales were so emotionally compromising and also omg I did not expect them to show peeling the blubber blanket like an orange on stage, amazing! The puppeteers dancing with Ahab and throwing him around in his lines and the ambiguity about whether everyone is a puppet because this is the little memory theatre Ishmael has constructed in his head or because they are all fated (or caught in whale lines!) is so good. I loved that they added mermaids, I didn't realise we needed deathly cosmic horror mermaids in moby dick. I too missed the Starbuck Ahab dialogue and also thought it was an inexplicable decision to have Starbuck be the one to leave pip off the boat when he gets so little else for characterisation but also its impossible to get the whole book in.....I loved the sense of immensity and drownedness throughout SO much.