The challenge in staging The Whale, Samuel D. Hunter’s deeply felt examination of love and redemption, can be summed up by the script’s obsession with its own title.

The show, beautifully restaged at the Alex Theatre Studio by the Melbourne Shakespeare Company, begins with an excerpt from an essay on Herman Melville’s Moby Dick, a classic literary tome where a white whale is both a metaphor and, well, just a whale.

Charlie (a magnetic Adam Lyon) reads this essay during the first of many cardiac episodes that will eventually kill him. He’s been gorging himself ever since his boyfriend’s death in a near-religious process of self-destruction. At 600 pounds, he’s now largely confined to his couch. It’s from here that he reaches out to his estranged daughter, Ellie (Skye Fellman), fathered with his ex-wife Mary (Tanya Schneideras). It was Ellie who wrote this essay.

Adam Lyon in Melbourne Shakespeare Company’s production of The Whale. Photo © Ben Andrews

The Whale recalls Moby Dick as much as it explores Charlie’s relationship with his daughter. Later, when Charlie recites the story of Jonah and the Whale, it becomes a biblical reference. But it’s also...