Herman Melville’s grave must be rocking.

If the author of the ultimate American adventure novel hadn’t already been struck with St Vitus Dance after gifting the most ubiquitous of coffee shop chains its name – Starbuck is the first mate of the whaling ship Pequod – the old boy must be seasick following the Brighton-based Spymonkey company’s deconstructed pastiche of his defining work.

As reimagined by an oh-so-serious actor-manager and his cobbled together company as a pocket- sized epic of increasingly ridiculous proportions, this Moby Dick is a whopper on every level.

It’s a typically arch approach from fringe veterans who’ve long been willing to take the rise out of their own mix of European physicality and quintessentially English alternative theatre delivery. The fact that the pre-show music is a cheesy orchestral version of Rod Stewart’s smash hit, Sailing, sets the tone for an ocean-wave of wheezy harmoniums, a Portuguese Ishmael (to make us listen closely to the words) and a puppet cabin boy whose female operator has just realised there are no women in the play, but sports rubber rings and a mermaid’s outfit whenever she can anyway.

Throw in some natives wearing day-glo feathers like they’re in the gay mardi-gras chill-out zone, and you see how Spymonkey have veered seriously off-curriculum. The great white whale itself is immortalised as part masked wrestler, part giant sperm, an image so memorable as to imprint itself into the psyche even if you haven’t read the book.

It’s a neat trick, infinitely funnier than the sort of franchise the Reduced Shakespeare Company flog round the commercial circuit, and an accidental blessing for the teenage audience who lapped it up. Herman Melville can rest easy, after all.

Star rating; ****