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Theatre: "Moby Dick! The Musical"
Island visitors and residents are already oh-too familiar with the theatrical presentation of Nantucket's whaling past as a moneymaking tool. As such, the treatment this history receives in the musical comedy "Moby Dick" will probably resonate more here than it has anyplace else in the world, including its home stage in London's famed West End - where the show enjoyed a cult following in the early 1990s.

Written by Robert Longden and Hereward Kaye, "Moby Dick! The Musical" is a frame tale - a story within in a story - about the bad teen girls of St. Godley's Academy for Young Ladies, who stage a slapdash performance of "Moby-Dick" (written by one of their very own students) as a fund-raiser for their impecunious Catholic school. (Some of the girls barely have enough fabric to cover themselves. Poor, supple dears.) The girls use whatever props they can find about the school to assist their performance: Hockey sticks double as oars, and bleachers become church pews. To cast the show, the Godley girls draft any and all available warm bodies, including their headmistress - who cross-dresses to play Ahab, the whaleship captain wildly obsessed with finding the white whale and killing it. Dead.

The show's performers now comprise TWN's first resident company: Dick Baker (SUNY Cortland), Erin Elizabeth Baltsar (Hartt School of Music), Donald Dallaire (University of Rhode Island), Caitlin Doyle (Emerson), Joe Gilmore (Wagner), Danielle Heaton (Emerson), Adam Ioele (Circle in the Square), Michael Keutmann (University of Pennsylvania), Rebecca Kubaska (Hartt), Meredith Lark (The Ohio State University), Tiffany Page (University of Rhode Island), Theresa Tokarowski (Manhattan School of Music) and Caitlin Wiater (Loyola University).

"If you took 'Nunsense' and 'Dames at Sea' and mushed it together, that's kind of what 'Moby Dick! The Musical,' is about, except you have schoolgirls instead of nuns, these bad little girls at a reform school," said the show's director, Roberta Esposito. "If you look at it, the show is done through the eyes of the schoolgirls. They're the ones who choreograph it, teach each other music, make the costumes. ... You have to look at it through their eyes. They bring their personalities into the show, with apologies to Melville."

When: August 22-25. Performance times are 8

p.m. every night but Wednesday night, when

performances are 8:30 p.m. You can also catch

2 p.m. matinees on Aug. 22, 23 and 24.

Where: Bennett Hall (on the side of the First

Congregational Church, 62 Centre St.) Cost: $50 Get more information as well as buy your tickets

online at www.theatreworkshop.com or call the box office at 228-4305. You can also visit the

box office at 2 Centre Street from noon - 9 p.m.

(Mon. - Sat.) and Sunday, from 4 p.m. - 9 p.m.

Theatre: "To Grandmother's House We Go" Jetti Ames stars in "To Grandmother's House We Go" - a comedy about family members tripping on the generational gap. Ames plays "Grandie," the matriarch whose family descends upon her beloved Connecticut Victorian for the Thanksgiving holiday; the turkey isn't the only one whose feathers get ruffled during the visit as the younger generations bring a mess of issues into the house, and the older generations try to be helpful while maintaining their autonomy.

Claire Bossee plays "Harriet" Grandie's daughter and mother to three 20something children: Beatrice (played by Los Angelino and summer resident, Samara Cohen), Muffy (played by Callie Kever) and Paul (played by Andrew Spencer), who brings with him a new girlfriend - Twyla (played by Alex Kopko).

Only 16, Kopko plays a character 10 years her senior. "She carries it off marvelously," Karakula said. "She has such a sophistication about her onstage."

Beloved local actor Frank Morral plays Jared, Grandie's brother, and Ann Roman rounds out the cast as Clem, the nanny.

"The play was written 20 years ago, but it still holds up," Karakula said. "I like to do these family-oriented shows during the height of the season, because the audiences tend to be family-oriented people."

When: Wed., Aug. 22 - Sat., Aug. 25;

and Tues. Aug. 28 - Sat., Sept. 1, 8:30 p.m.

The matinee is Sun., Aug. 19, at 3 p.m.

Where: TWN mainstage, downstairs at the

Methodist Church, 2 Centre St.

Cost: $25

Encore performance: "Jack and the Beanstalk" After a sold-out run of "Cinderella," TWN motors through its first season of children's theatre with "Jack and the Beanstalk," written by Michele Vacca. Starring members of TWN's first professional summer resident company, the show introduces the audience to a newly adapted and interactive story of the young man who found a magical way to help his widowed mother after their milking cow goes dry.

Following the show, kids can meet Jack, his Mom and Milky the Cow during a Teddy Bear Picnic on the lawn of the church.

Containing a few special effects, "Jack and the Beanstalk" will certainly appeal to family-oriented people, especially those with little members

Encore performance: Thurs., Aug. 23 at 2 p.m.

Where: Bennett Hall, 62 Centre St. Cost: $15; for an extra fee, audience members can attended a picnic with the characters following the performance; For tickets or more information, call the box office (downstairs at 2 Centre St.) at 228-4305.

Book talk: Award-winning Coast Guard author Martha LaGuardia-Kotite is the U.S. Coast Guard Reserves Commander and awardwinning author of "So Others May Live: Coast Guard's Rescue Swimmers: Saving Lives, Defying Death." She'll speak on her book this week at the Egan Maritime Foundation's Coffin School.

The book narrates the heretofore-untold story of the U.S. Coast Guard helicopter rescue swimmer, via 12 stories of heroic maritime rescues attempted by Coast Guard aircrews since the program was started in 1985.

LaGuardia-Kotite is a graduate of the U.S. Coast Guard Academy and a writer with hundreds of magazine articles to her credit. She has been awarded numerous medals for her leadership and performance in the U.S. Coast Guard. She is currently a Commander in the U.S. Coast Guard Reserves and has been assigned as an Emergency Preparedness Liaison Officer for Federal Region II and as the Press Secretary for the Principal Federal Official for the Gulf Region. She lives in New York City and Northwest Florida with her husband Peter and their two children Aaron and John.

BMC Terrill J. Malvesti, of USCG Brant Point Station, will introduce her.

When: Thurs., Aug. 23, 8 p.m. Where: The Coffin School, 4

Winter Street

Cost: Free for Egan members;

General admission, $5

Nantucket Film Festival screening with Chris Matthews They compromised everything in their lives to row 3,000 miles across the Atlantic - a challenge that has seen fewer victors than scaling Mount Everest. Tom Mailhot and John Zeigler spent years preparing for the 2001 journey, which lasted 58 days - the duration of the Atlantic Rowing Challenge, which includes neither food assistance nor navigational aids. Competitors have to assemble their own boats, and they have no prize money ahead. Of the crew on the 36 teams from around the world, Mailhot and Ziegler were among the oldest to participate in the race. But age was the smallest obstacle they had to face.

Luke Wolbach produced and directed "Row Hard, No Excuses," the film chronicling these men's transatlantic rowboat race from the Canary Islands to Barbados.

The documentary has been an official selection at a multitude of festivals, including Cannes, Boston and Nantucket, where it won "Best Storytelling in a Documentary" at this summer's festival.

It returns to Nantucket courtesy of the NFF this Friday for a benefit screening at Westmoor Farm's Green Barn, to be followed by a reception and discussion at 5:30 p.m. with MSNBC's Chris Matthews and one of the film's subjects, rower Tom Mailhot.

When: Friday, Aug. 24, 4 p.m. (film), 5 p.m.

(reception) Where: Westmoor Farm's Green Barn Cost: Tickets cost $150 and may be purchased at

the door, if available, or by calling (212) 708-

1261.

Art opening: "Love of the Land" For the second year, the Nantucket Land Council's "Love of the Land" show translates artists' everyday appreciation of this island's indigenous flora into images of beauty and artistic experimentation. The images are on display next weekend, along with images created by Lighthouse School students. Last year, the kids fashioned an entire wall calendar filled with sketches they made of flowers around the island, raising several thousand dollars for the NLC's effort to secure the Loring property's easement. The images that went into the calendar will appear in the show next week.

This year, the money raised by the show will likely go to the Nantucket Land Council's education fund, said membership coordinator, Elisabeth Hazell.

When: Opens Fri., Aug. 24, 6 - 8 p.m.

reception (open through Saturday) Where: PI: N 11 Centre St. Cost: Free For more information, please call

228-2818