Moby Dick (sometimes referred to as Moby Dick — Rehearsed) is a two-act drama written by Orson Welles. The play was staged June 16–July 9, 1955, at the Duke of York's Theatre in London, in a production directed by Welles. The original cast included Welles, Christopher Lee, Kenneth Williams, Joan Plowright, Patrick McGoohan, Gordon Jackson, Peter Sallis, and Wensley Pithey.Welles, Orson and Peter Bogdanovich, This is Orson Welles. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1992, Welles career chronology by Jonathan Rosenbaum, p. 418. The play was published by Samuel French in 1965.Welles, Orson, Moby Dick — Rehearsed: A Drama in Two Acts. New York: Samuel French, Inc., 1965, . "Being an adaptation—for the most part in blank verse—of the novel by Herman Melville."
Welles used minimal stage design. The stage was bare, the actors appeared in contemporary street clothes, and the props were minimal. For example, brooms were used for oars, and a stick was used for a telescope. The actors provided the action, and the audience's imagination provided the ocean, costumes, and the whale.
Welles filmed approximately 75 minutes of the production, with the original cast, at the Hackney Empire and Scala Theatres in London. He hoped to sell the film to Omnibus, the United States television series which had presented his live performance of King Lear in 1953; but Welles stopped shooting when he was disappointed in the results. The film is lost.
Plot The setting is a mid-19th-century American repertory theater. The play begins subtly as the audience arrives with the cast milling around an empty stage. The cast members generally fool around and complain about their boss and their forthcoming production of King Lear. Then, making a big dramatic entrance and smoking a cigar, the actor manager of the time comes on stage and tells them they are going to rehearse a version of Herman Melville's 1851 novel Moby Dick that the Young Actor has been adapting for the stage.
The cast grudgingly performs the play, improvising scenery from items lying around, and gradually get more into character as the play develops.
Productions
London Directed by Orson Welles, the original production of Moby Dick — Rehearsed ran June 16–July 9, 1955, at the Duke of York's Theatre, London. Programmes for the London run, including the opening night performance, give the title as simply Moby Dick.Theatre Programme: Moby Dick. Duke of York's Theatre, London. 16 June 1956 (printing date 13 June).
Actor Role Gordon Jackson A Young Actor/Ishmael Christopher Lee / Peter SallisPeter Sallis: Fading Into the Limelight, Orion 2006 A Stage Manager/Flask Patrick McGoohan A Serious Actor/Starbuck Wensley Pithey A Middle-Aged Actor/Stubb Joan Plowright A Young Actress/Pip Orson Welles An Actor Manager/Father Mapple/Ahab Kenneth Williams A Very Serious Actor/Elijah and others Joseph Chelton A Manager/Tashtego John Gray An Assistant Stage Manager/Bo'sun Jefferson Clifford An Experienced Actor/Peleg
New York Directed by Douglas Campbell, Moby Dick was presented on Broadway November 28–December 8, 1962, at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre. Orson Welles was not involved in the production, which ran 13 performances.
Actor Role Bruno Gerussi A Young Actor/Ishmael Max Helpmann A Cynical Actor/Flask Roy Poole A Serious Actor/Starbuck Hugh Webster Actor with Newspaper/Stubb Frances Hyland A Young Actress/Pip Rod Steiger An Actor Manager/Father Mapple/Ahab Bill Fletcher Member of the Company/Elijah Louis Zorich Middle-aged Actor/Tashtego William Needles Stage Manager/Peleg/Voice of The Rachel David Thomas An Old Pro/The Carpenter John Horton Member of the Company/The Mastheader/Voice of The Bachelor Lee Morrison Member of the Company/Queequeg Melvin Scott Member of the Company/Daggoo
The play has since been performed numerous times on both sides of the Atlantic.
Film Orson Welles filmed approximately 75 minutes of the original 1955 production, with the original cast, at the Hackney Empire and Scala Theatres in London. He hoped to sell the film to Omnibus, the United States television series which had presented his live performance of King Lear in 1953; but Welles stopped shooting when he was disappointed in the results. The film is lost, with the only copy believed to have been destroyed when a fire broke out at Welles's Madrid home in 1970, while he rented it to the actor Robert Shaw, who was drunkenly smoking in bed.
Because the film is lost, many people have speculated it was never created. However, evidence supporting the film having been made can be found in the book, The Films of Christopher Lee, by Pohle Jr. and HartPatrick McGoohan said in a 1986 interview that the excerpt of the film he saw while Welles was reviewing the rushes one day was fantastic.Roger Langley, Patrick McGoohan: Danger Man or Prisoner? , Tomahawk Press, 2007.
In The Fabulous Orson Welles, by Peter Noble, cameraman Hilton Craig reveals: "it was by no means merely a photographed stage-play. On the contrary, it was shot largely in close-ups and looked very impressive on near-completion."
Kenneth Williams' autobiography Just Williams records Williams' apprehension at the project, as it was filmed by the play's cast in just one weekend at the then-abandoned Hackney Empire theatre. He describes how Welles' dim, atmospheric stage lighting made some of the footage so dark as to be unwatchable. At least 40 minutes of the play was filmed, but is now presumed lost.
Of the film project, Welles's official biographer Barbara Leaming wrote in 1985:
In support of this, Leaming quotes Welles's friend at the time, the playwright Wolf Mankowitz, who said: "Orson's attitude is a very pragmatic one. He thinks until you get on the set with the actors and lights and the rest of it, you don't know whether it's going to work or not. And he simply reserves the right as an artist to sort of drop it if it doesn't work."
It is believed that the Munich Film Museum, which holds many of Welles's unfinished films, is in possession of the reels of the unfinished film; but by the time they had been donated in the 1990s, the reels had deteriorated beyond recovery; nonetheless, the museum is preserving these reels in case future technologies may be able to recover them.Wellesnet interview with Jonathan Rosenbaum, January 2003, posted at http://www.jonathanrosenbaum.net/2003/01/wellesnet-interview/
The Moby Dick — Rehearsed film is not to be confused with a later unfinished film project in 1971, wherein Welles filmed 22 minutes of various scenes from the play, playing all the parts himself. The footage of that film was acquired by the Munich Film Museum in 1995 and restored in 1999.
Other film versions The play was adapted for Australian television in 1965.
References
External links
wellesnet: The orson welles web resource Kenneth Williams recalls Moby Dick Rehearsed and Orson Welles (1978)