Moby Dick – Rehearsed, Orson Welles’ stage adaptation of the Herman Meville classic novel, will be performed throughout the summer at Will Geer’s Theatricum Botanicum in Topanga, California.
In Welles’ play, a Shakespearean acting troupe works between performances of King Lear to create a play about Moby Dick. As the actors take up their new roles, the theater is transformed from a bare stage into the yardarms, sails, masts and deck of a ship hunting the great white whale. As Welles originally envisioned, the actors provide the action-packed drama and the audience’s imagination provides the ocean, period costumes and white whale.
Ellen Geer, the play’s director, is the daughter of the late Will Geer, who starred as Mr. Mister in Welles’ controversial Federal Theatre Project production of The Cradle Will Rock in 1937.
Moby Dick – Rehearsed runs June 8 through September 29 at the Los Angeles area theater.
The production stars Theatricum company members Tavis L. Baker as Stubb, Tim Halligan as Peleg, KiDané Kelati as Pip, Jacob Louis as Elijah, Melora Marshall as Flask, Michael McFall as Queequeg, Dane Oliver as Ishmael, Gerald C. Rivers as Captain Ahab, Franc Ross as the director, Dante Ryan as Tashtego, Colin Simon as Starbuck and Isaac Wilkins as Daggoo. The creative team includes choreographer Dane Oliver, costume designer Beth Eslick, lighting designer Zach Moore and prop master Dante Carr, with original music and sound design by Marshall McDaniel.
Moby Dick–Rehearsed premiered at the Duke of York’s Theatre in London in 1955. The original cast included Welles, Kenneth Williams, Joan Plowright, Patrick McGoohan and Gordon Jackson. The play was published by Samuel French in 1965.
The production will perform in repertory on the main stage with currently running productions of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night and A Midsummer Night’s Dream. On June 22, Ellen Geer’s new, freely adapted version of Henrik Ibsen‘s powerful An Enemy of the People joins the season, and Thornton Wilder’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play, The Skin of Our Teeth kicks off on July 13. All five productions will continue to play in repertory through Sept. 29. A sixth production will open Aug. 17 on the smaller stage in the theater’s intimate S. Mark Taper Pavilion: The Gin Game by D.L. Coburn — another Pulitzer Prize winner — will star long-time Theatricum company members and real life husband-and-wife team Alan Blumenfeld and Katherine James in a co-production with the Sierra Madre Playhouse.
Unlike most theaters in the Los Angeles area that stage continuous runs of a single play, Theatricum, using a company of actors, will perform each of the plays in repertory, making it possible to see six plays in a single summer weekend.
For tickets and further details on the performance, visit https://theatricum.com
Wellesnet readers can receive 15% off tickets with the code WILLGEER
__________
Post your comments on the Wellesnet Message Board.