Moby Dick Rehearsed Book Available
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by DexyMan » Sat May 20, 2006 9:36 pm
At the risk of being embarassed I wanted to mention that after searching for a long time for this play I found that it is still in print on Samuel French's website for 6.50. The shipping is actually more than the play. Just thought there might be others out there looking for it. I just started reading it and it is pretty cool although not as novel-like as Big Brass Ring of course.
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by Store Hadji » Mon May 22, 2006 5:51 am
Mostly it's a straight-forward adaption of Melville, with the actors and director as a framing device. Very good. Would have been a hell of a thing to see. Wasn't the Welles stage production filmed?
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by NoFake » Mon May 22, 2006 8:10 am
I'm not sure about the film, but it has been staged; Jeff reported it last year:
"I received word of the American Century Theater's production of Moby Dick Rehearsed, the pertinent details I was sent being: The production returns on March 24, 2005. The play is again directed by Jack Marshall. Tickets are $18-$26. Moby Dick Rehearsed is at Theater II, Gunston Arts Center, 2700 S. Lang Street, Arlington, VA 22206. Call 703-553-8782 or visit www.americancentury.org." I saw it; as I recall, it was well done, and received good reviews. (If I find any of the materials, I'll post more info.)
"I received word of the American Century Theater's production of Moby Dick Rehearsed, the pertinent details I was sent being: The production returns on March 24, 2005. The play is again directed by Jack Marshall. Tickets are $18-$26. Moby Dick Rehearsed is at Theater II, Gunston Arts Center, 2700 S. Lang Street, Arlington, VA 22206. Call 703-553-8782 or visit www.americancentury.org." I saw it; as I recall, it was well done, and received good reviews. (If I find any of the materials, I'll post more info.)
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by Tony » Wed May 31, 2006 10:06 am
Here's a review from a 1999 production:
THEATER REVIEW; Call Me Rosebud: A Whale Of a Tale
By BEN BRANTLEY
Published: July 27, 1999,
Wrestling with great white whales is neither a humble nor a risk-free sport. As a manual on the subject called ''Moby-Dick'' points out, the activity requires obsession, determination and the sort of gods-defying arrogance of which tragedies are made. These are, of course, traits identified with Herman Melville's vengeful Captain Ahab; they also apply to Orson Welles, the brilliant director and actor who decided with Ahabian hubris to put ''Moby-Dick'' on a London stage in the mid-1950's.
The play, which bore the criticism-deflecting title of ''Moby Dick -- Rehearsed,'' has now been bravely resurrected by the Berkshire Theater Company, not far from where Melville once lived and wrote. The production confirms, with surprising sweetness for such a bloody tale, the central point of Welles's original venture: that it does indeed require hubris just to put on a play; that there is a touch of Ahab, striving for the impossible, in every actor, director and dramatist.
Wrestling with great white whales is neither a humble nor a risk-free sport. As a manual on the subject called ''Moby-Dick'' points out, the activity requires obsession, determination and the sort of gods-defying arrogance of which tragedies are made. These are, of course, traits identified with Herman Melville's vengeful Captain Ahab; they also apply to Orson Welles, the brilliant director and actor who decided with Ahabian hubris to put ''Moby-Dick'' on a London stage in the mid-1950's.
The play, which bore the criticism-deflecting title of ''Moby Dick -- Rehearsed,'' has now been bravely resurrected by the Berkshire Theater Company, not far from where Melville once lived and wrote. The production confirms, with surprising sweetness for such a bloody tale, the central point of Welles's original venture: that it does indeed require hubris just to put on a play; that there is a touch of Ahab, striving for the impossible, in every actor, director and dramatist.
''Pure theatrical megalomania'' was how Kenneth Tynan characterized Welles's ''Moby Dick -- Rehearsed'' when it opened at the Duke of York's Theater in the West End in 1955. Tynan, unlike other critics who made similar observations, meant this as a compliment, and went on to praise the show, which used only a minimum of scenery, as ''a sustained assault on the senses, which dwarfs anything that London has ever seen since, perhaps, the Great Fire.''
The Berkshire interpretation, which is directed by Eric Hill and runs through Saturday, is unlikely to inspire comparable flights of hyperbole. It is a more modest piece of immodesty that never quite scales the Olympian crags that Welles aspired to. But it is also a very likable, and often very moving, evening of theater that speaks directly to the relationship between an art and its audience, of the complicitous game that looks for the truth in make-believe. Or as a character in the play says, describing the storm in ''King Lear,'' ''It's real, but it's more than real.''
Yes, ''King Lear'' is also a part of Welles's script. Working with the distancing Brechtian showmanship he brought to his innovative Mercury Theater productions of ''Macbeth'' and ''Julius Caesar,'' Welles framed Melville's story with that of a turn-of-the-century acting company. The troupe, while touring with ''Lear,'' agrees to devote a couple of hours to a dry rehearsal of ''Moby-Dick'' as rendered for the stage by one of their members.
Some subsequent productions of ''Moby Dick -- Rehearsed'' eliminated this framing device, and you can see why: the scenes have a schoolteacherly quality, friendly and flat, that pales beside Melville's febrile prose. But they are also essential. They create a sense of theater as an act of will and imagination, and the mannered, historical style of performance associated with the era of Sir Henry Irving makes speaking Melville's nonconversational language a bit easier. What's more, an implicit case is presented for the truly Shakespearean grandeur of Melville's metaphoric writing, adapted here as blank verse.
The show begins, as it has to, with the words ''Call me Ishmael.'' They are spoken by a young actor (Tom Story) in the spotlighted center of the stage, while behind him the other performers creep forward in shadowy silhouettes, like specters summoned at a seance. Mr. Story's character has penned the version of ''Moby-Dick'' that the company, with considerable reluctance, is now to rehearse.
The troupe's commanding Actor Manager (David Purdham), who switches from Lear to Ahab for the occasion, defends his young protege against the skeptics, one of whom says wonderingly, ''A shipwreck, a typhoon and a great white whale in this theater?'' The older man speaks with self-dramatizing flair of his profession and says that it will be up to the audience to furnish the wood-beamed, crate-strewn stage (the set is by Rob Odorisio) with such things.
What follows is an exercise in hypnosis, as the actors assemble into precisely choreographed configurations suggesting everything from a Nantucket whaler's chapel to a crew at sea. They sway and lurch in synchronized movement to evoke the tossing of the Pequod; they hunch urgently as one body when a whale is sighted. There is actual singing of chanteys and hymns, but spoken words are also given choral interpretations, with repetition and counterpoint. (Welles had once thought of doing the show as a cantata by Honegger.)
There are also, of course, many passages of narrative and soliloquy, which stay reasonably close to Melville's originals and do indeed invite comparison to Shakespeare. (I hadn't realized exactly how much so until I saw this production, and the comparison stayed firm even after I went back to the book.) It is here that you miss a Wellesian presence and, particularly, a Wellesian voice that could make ardent, mellifluous love to those words.
Of the principal performers, Mr. Story and Casey Biggs, as the virtuous first mate, Starbuck, come off best. Welles devilishly matched his fictional troupe members to their roles in the play-within-the-play, so that, for example, Starbuck's first identity is as a Serious Actor, who gravely questions his motivation. Mr. Biggs makes this self-conscious earnestness work for Starbuck as well, just as Mr. Story brings an exuberant, expressly youthful quality of overemphasis to everything he says.
Mr. Purdham doesn't have everything needed to fill the tall order of the part Welles created for himself. With his gracefully curled gray beard and matching hair, he looks more like one of those justice-loving leaders in epic biblical movies than a wild-eyed monomaniac, and he is clearly more at home with natural line readings than with fire-and-brimstone delivery. An overwrought scene between Ahab and the mad cabin boy, Pip (Careen Melia, as the troupe's one female member), meant to parallel an earlier moment between Lear and Cordelia, is especially hard to swallow.
But Mr. Purdham also has wonderful moments when his Actor Manager tries to break out of Ahab's character and finds he is somehow stuck, as though trapped in a trance. That's what the whole evening has been about, casting a spell that envelops both actors and audience. This production may not be a seamless magic act, but it has its enchanting share of instances in which everyone onstage seems to be melded into some rapt communion of belief in what they're doing.
And though a two-hour version of ''Moby-Dick'' represents radical condensation, the restless, questing and fatalistic spirit peculiar to Melville's novel comes through. All things visible, as Ahab says to Starbuck, are ''but pasteboard masks,'' which conceal an ineffable essence beneath. Finding the essence beneath the pasteboard: that's exactly what theater tries to do.
MOBY DICK -- REHEARSED
By Orson Welles; directed by Eric Hill; sets by Rob Odorisio; costumes by Murell Horton; lighting by Dan Kotlowitz; composer, Scott Killian; assistant director, Oliver Butler; production stage manager, Chris DeCamillis. Presented by the Berkshire Theater Festival, Stockbridge, Mass.
WITH: Tom Story (Ishmael), Casey Biggs (Starbuck), Careena Melia (Pip) and David Purdham (Ahab).
THEATER REVIEW; Call Me Rosebud: A Whale Of a Tale
By BEN BRANTLEY
Published: July 27, 1999,
Wrestling with great white whales is neither a humble nor a risk-free sport. As a manual on the subject called ''Moby-Dick'' points out, the activity requires obsession, determination and the sort of gods-defying arrogance of which tragedies are made. These are, of course, traits identified with Herman Melville's vengeful Captain Ahab; they also apply to Orson Welles, the brilliant director and actor who decided with Ahabian hubris to put ''Moby-Dick'' on a London stage in the mid-1950's.
The play, which bore the criticism-deflecting title of ''Moby Dick -- Rehearsed,'' has now been bravely resurrected by the Berkshire Theater Company, not far from where Melville once lived and wrote. The production confirms, with surprising sweetness for such a bloody tale, the central point of Welles's original venture: that it does indeed require hubris just to put on a play; that there is a touch of Ahab, striving for the impossible, in every actor, director and dramatist.
Wrestling with great white whales is neither a humble nor a risk-free sport. As a manual on the subject called ''Moby-Dick'' points out, the activity requires obsession, determination and the sort of gods-defying arrogance of which tragedies are made. These are, of course, traits identified with Herman Melville's vengeful Captain Ahab; they also apply to Orson Welles, the brilliant director and actor who decided with Ahabian hubris to put ''Moby-Dick'' on a London stage in the mid-1950's.
The play, which bore the criticism-deflecting title of ''Moby Dick -- Rehearsed,'' has now been bravely resurrected by the Berkshire Theater Company, not far from where Melville once lived and wrote. The production confirms, with surprising sweetness for such a bloody tale, the central point of Welles's original venture: that it does indeed require hubris just to put on a play; that there is a touch of Ahab, striving for the impossible, in every actor, director and dramatist.
''Pure theatrical megalomania'' was how Kenneth Tynan characterized Welles's ''Moby Dick -- Rehearsed'' when it opened at the Duke of York's Theater in the West End in 1955. Tynan, unlike other critics who made similar observations, meant this as a compliment, and went on to praise the show, which used only a minimum of scenery, as ''a sustained assault on the senses, which dwarfs anything that London has ever seen since, perhaps, the Great Fire.''
The Berkshire interpretation, which is directed by Eric Hill and runs through Saturday, is unlikely to inspire comparable flights of hyperbole. It is a more modest piece of immodesty that never quite scales the Olympian crags that Welles aspired to. But it is also a very likable, and often very moving, evening of theater that speaks directly to the relationship between an art and its audience, of the complicitous game that looks for the truth in make-believe. Or as a character in the play says, describing the storm in ''King Lear,'' ''It's real, but it's more than real.''
Yes, ''King Lear'' is also a part of Welles's script. Working with the distancing Brechtian showmanship he brought to his innovative Mercury Theater productions of ''Macbeth'' and ''Julius Caesar,'' Welles framed Melville's story with that of a turn-of-the-century acting company. The troupe, while touring with ''Lear,'' agrees to devote a couple of hours to a dry rehearsal of ''Moby-Dick'' as rendered for the stage by one of their members.
Some subsequent productions of ''Moby Dick -- Rehearsed'' eliminated this framing device, and you can see why: the scenes have a schoolteacherly quality, friendly and flat, that pales beside Melville's febrile prose. But they are also essential. They create a sense of theater as an act of will and imagination, and the mannered, historical style of performance associated with the era of Sir Henry Irving makes speaking Melville's nonconversational language a bit easier. What's more, an implicit case is presented for the truly Shakespearean grandeur of Melville's metaphoric writing, adapted here as blank verse.
The show begins, as it has to, with the words ''Call me Ishmael.'' They are spoken by a young actor (Tom Story) in the spotlighted center of the stage, while behind him the other performers creep forward in shadowy silhouettes, like specters summoned at a seance. Mr. Story's character has penned the version of ''Moby-Dick'' that the company, with considerable reluctance, is now to rehearse.
The troupe's commanding Actor Manager (David Purdham), who switches from Lear to Ahab for the occasion, defends his young protege against the skeptics, one of whom says wonderingly, ''A shipwreck, a typhoon and a great white whale in this theater?'' The older man speaks with self-dramatizing flair of his profession and says that it will be up to the audience to furnish the wood-beamed, crate-strewn stage (the set is by Rob Odorisio) with such things.
What follows is an exercise in hypnosis, as the actors assemble into precisely choreographed configurations suggesting everything from a Nantucket whaler's chapel to a crew at sea. They sway and lurch in synchronized movement to evoke the tossing of the Pequod; they hunch urgently as one body when a whale is sighted. There is actual singing of chanteys and hymns, but spoken words are also given choral interpretations, with repetition and counterpoint. (Welles had once thought of doing the show as a cantata by Honegger.)
There are also, of course, many passages of narrative and soliloquy, which stay reasonably close to Melville's originals and do indeed invite comparison to Shakespeare. (I hadn't realized exactly how much so until I saw this production, and the comparison stayed firm even after I went back to the book.) It is here that you miss a Wellesian presence and, particularly, a Wellesian voice that could make ardent, mellifluous love to those words.
Of the principal performers, Mr. Story and Casey Biggs, as the virtuous first mate, Starbuck, come off best. Welles devilishly matched his fictional troupe members to their roles in the play-within-the-play, so that, for example, Starbuck's first identity is as a Serious Actor, who gravely questions his motivation. Mr. Biggs makes this self-conscious earnestness work for Starbuck as well, just as Mr. Story brings an exuberant, expressly youthful quality of overemphasis to everything he says.
Mr. Purdham doesn't have everything needed to fill the tall order of the part Welles created for himself. With his gracefully curled gray beard and matching hair, he looks more like one of those justice-loving leaders in epic biblical movies than a wild-eyed monomaniac, and he is clearly more at home with natural line readings than with fire-and-brimstone delivery. An overwrought scene between Ahab and the mad cabin boy, Pip (Careen Melia, as the troupe's one female member), meant to parallel an earlier moment between Lear and Cordelia, is especially hard to swallow.
But Mr. Purdham also has wonderful moments when his Actor Manager tries to break out of Ahab's character and finds he is somehow stuck, as though trapped in a trance. That's what the whole evening has been about, casting a spell that envelops both actors and audience. This production may not be a seamless magic act, but it has its enchanting share of instances in which everyone onstage seems to be melded into some rapt communion of belief in what they're doing.
And though a two-hour version of ''Moby-Dick'' represents radical condensation, the restless, questing and fatalistic spirit peculiar to Melville's novel comes through. All things visible, as Ahab says to Starbuck, are ''but pasteboard masks,'' which conceal an ineffable essence beneath. Finding the essence beneath the pasteboard: that's exactly what theater tries to do.
MOBY DICK -- REHEARSED
By Orson Welles; directed by Eric Hill; sets by Rob Odorisio; costumes by Murell Horton; lighting by Dan Kotlowitz; composer, Scott Killian; assistant director, Oliver Butler; production stage manager, Chris DeCamillis. Presented by the Berkshire Theater Festival, Stockbridge, Mass.
WITH: Tom Story (Ishmael), Casey Biggs (Starbuck), Careena Melia (Pip) and David Purdham (Ahab).
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by Glenn Anders » Wed May 31, 2006 1:27 pm
Thanks, Tony, for bringing this back to us. Though the critic repeats himself at this point, his review is useful.
At the very least, it indicates that "Moby Dick -- Rehearsed" has had staying power as a challenging project for theatrical production.
Glenn
At the very least, it indicates that "Moby Dick -- Rehearsed" has had staying power as a challenging project for theatrical production.
Glenn
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by tonyw » Wed May 31, 2006 4:42 pm
:;): Glenn, I remember you posted your memories of seeing the original London stage production some time ago. Perhaps new members to this site and others joining in this discussion might appreciate the co-ordinates so they can appreciate your great memory.
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by Glenn Anders » Wed May 31, 2006 10:39 pm
Thank you, tonyw, but I'm afraid I've lost that thread. 
Being Off Topic so often does that to me.
One day, Larry French will dry clean the Wellesnet, and we shall find a Treasure of the Sierra Madre of observations by others here much more precious than mine.
But I must say, again, that seeing Welles' 1955 "Moby Dick -- Rehearsed" at the Duke of York's Theater in London was one of the great theatrical experiences of my life.
Glenn
Being Off Topic so often does that to me.One day, Larry French will dry clean the Wellesnet, and we shall find a Treasure of the Sierra Madre of observations by others here much more precious than mine.
But I must say, again, that seeing Welles' 1955 "Moby Dick -- Rehearsed" at the Duke of York's Theater in London was one of the great theatrical experiences of my life.
Glenn
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by RayKelly » Thu Jun 01, 2006 4:25 pm
I previewed and attended the Berkshire Theater Festival production of Moby Dick Rehearsed back in 1999. The cast was superb. Herman Melville lived at Arrowhead in Pittsfield, MA. A local filmmaker was making a Melville documentary that included scenes from the BTF production. sadly it never surfaced.
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by Glenn Anders » Fri Jun 02, 2006 1:34 pm
Flukes, mteal! You've caught the elusive fish!
Thank you very much. I've made a copy of it now, so it won't be lost again.
Reading my account of seeing Moby Dick -- Rehearsed was like seeing it all over again.
Glenn
Thank you very much. I've made a copy of it now, so it won't be lost again.
Reading my account of seeing Moby Dick -- Rehearsed was like seeing it all over again.
Glenn
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by mteal » Sat Jul 22, 2006 10:03 am
BTW, did anyone in the Chicago area manage to see the recent production of MOBY DICK REHEARSED at the Morton Arborateum? I did everything I could think of to try and work it in to my schedule, but unfortunately couldn't.
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by Roger Ryan » Sun Jul 23, 2006 1:23 pm
mteal wrote:BTW, did anyone in the Chicago area manage to see the recent production of MOBY DICK REHEARSED at the Morton Arborateum? I did everything I could think of to try and work it in to my schedule, but unfortunately couldn't.
I thought about attending it myself when I was in Chicago a couple of weeks back, but then read a review which called the production hopelessly amatuerish, not the way I would want to experience it for the first time!
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