Learning on ScreenMoby Dick Rehearsed
- Synopsis
- Version, intended for television, of Welles’ stage production of his play based on Melville’s novel. Filmed for three weeks but filming subsequently abandoned after c75 minutes had been shot. It was performed at the Duke of York’s in London in 1955 and the film starred the original stage cast. Set in a mid-19th century American repertory theatre, the play begins stealthily as the audience arrives with the cast milling around an empty stage. The cast fools around and complains about their boss and the forthcoming production of King Lear which they are rehearsing. Then, making a big dramatic entrance and smoking a cigar, the actor manager comes onstage and tells them they are going not going to rehearse King Lear after all, but another piece, Moby Dick.
- Language
- English
- Country
- Great Britain
- Medium
- Television
- Recording date
- 15 Jul 1955
Credits
- Director
- Orson Welles
- Cinematographer
- Hilton Craig
- Screenplay
- Orson Welles
- Cast
Additional Details
- Production type
- Television and Radio Drama
- Plays
- King Lear
- Subjects
- Drama
- Keywords
- Shakespeare, William (1564-1616)
Notes
- General
- `Welles’s minimal stage design was possibly influenced by his long-term friend, Michael Macliammoir, and what he termed "anti-naturalist theater". 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. 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."[wikipedia, 2/2007].
- Reviews
- Kenneth Tynan’s review of the stage production is reprinted in Tynan on Theatre (London: Penguin, 1964, pp137-9). Tynan writes ‘Mr Welles clearly sees Ahab as Lear and Pip as a cross-breed of the Fool and Cordelia’.
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