The mask of Captain Ahab, designed and built by Amy G. Bergman and Marianne Murphy. Photo by Pat Padua.

The Loose Ends Theatre Collective’s Moby Dick, An Adaptation for Theatre, efficiently condenses Herman Melville’s 200,000-plus words into ninety minutes of compelling theatre. Michael Bergman adapted the classic text for eight actors who take on a multitude of voices and puppet masks, save for the singular Ishmael. The masks — sometimes raised on poles, sometimes hand-held — are constructed for vivid characters like the landlord of the Spouter Inn, Father Mapple, who delivers the powerful Jonah sermon, and, most prominently and symbolically, Captain Ahab, whose ragged visage is held high above actors’ heads in a simple but effective display of authority.

The production was originally developed at McLean’ Potomac School, and most of the cast have the fresh faces of recent college grads (about the age of certain crew members aboard the ill-fated Pequod). The actors weave a powerful adventure from a spare stage with minimal props, but I can’t help but see the production as a metaphor for another adventure, the one in which these talented actors find themselves on the cusp of adulthood. Drew Morrison, the impressive actor who plays Ishmael is, interestingly, the only performer who doesn’t take on multiple roles. His fellow cast members juggle many, and each takes a turn either voicing Ahab’s dramatic monologues or raising his mask. In Ahab and the crew of the Pequod, Ishmael finds a summation of man’s search for meaning. We who read Melville’s timeless prose, or reckon with this modest stage adaptation, search for this meaning in literature, theatre and life.

This Moby Dick works as adaptation, but what makes this production more fascinating is beyond the book. It is a meta-Moby, where we are all Ahab, struggling with our obsessions, looking for significance in what seems a tumultuous sea.

There are three remaining performances of Moby Dick, An Adaptation for Theatre: July 13th at 9:45 p.m., July 16th at 4:30 p.m. and July 22nd at 8:30 p.m. at the Warehouse, 645 New York Avenue NW.