WOULD Herman Melville redraft Moby Dick after seeing Spymonkey’s version of the maritime adventure?

Would he be tempted to pop in a mermaid and cast wandering sailor Ishmael as a lively Spaniard?

The theatre company, whose members live in London, Brighton, Bilbao and Vienna, got together with a director in Paris to create their “re-telling” of the well-loved story.

It follows the theatrical tradition of a play within a play, but plenty that is not traditional about the show.

“A theatre company is putting on a classic production of Moby Dick and the three of us have other designs on the show,” explains the only female Spymonkey Petra Massey.

“We’re genuinely trying to tell the story but we keep getting sidetracked.”

Put simply, the plot is made up of key scenes transcribed from the film version with the Spymonkey bits in between.

So it’s recognisably Moby Dick, with Captain Ahab chasing the great white whale, but also perceptibly not.

The show came about because Stefan Massey (“the German”) had happy childhood memories of watching the film with his brother.

“They’d play Moby Dick versus Ahab on the sofa and hit and punch each other,” reveals Massey.

“We were driving back from a gig and chatting about what the next show could be and he suggested it. We’re a bit of a yes company so we all said yes.”

As she had never read Melville’s 1851 novel, there was a surprise in store.