Orson Welles reads 'Moby Dick'

Little known is the fact that Welles wrote and starred in a play entitled "Moby Dick — Rehearsed," which he filmed for British television in 1955.

It's currently being performed in New York City at the Richmond Shepard Theater (309 East 26th Street (at Second Avenue); 212-868-4444; details here.

Jason Zinoman reviewed the show in a March 10, 2007 New York Times story.

Toward the end of his life (he died at age 70 in 1985) Welles filmed scenes of himself reading from the novel, an excerpt of which appears up top.

YouTube has others as well.

The Times article follows.

That Great White Whale Through a Wellesian Lens

It takes a fool or perhaps a genius to adapt one of the greatest American novels for the stage — and Orson Welles was a bit of both. He chased “Moby-Dick” through much of the 1950s. After writing and starring in “Moby Dick — Rehearsed” in 1955, he made his own film version of that Melville classic for British television before starring in John Huston’s. But Welles still wasn’t finished, returning to the novel at the end of his life, filming scenes of himself reading it in one of his many unfinished works. (There are remarkable excerpts on YouTube.)

Welles may never have caught the big fish in the same way that he captured, say, William Randolph Hearst in “Citizen Kane,” but this gripping revival of “Moby Dick — Rehearsed,” presented by Twenty Feet Productions with a Shakespearean sweep, proves that this was a perfect marriage of man and material.

It’s easy to forget that Welles was first a man of the theater, and this ferocious drama, a poetic examination of one man’s obsession, is, among other things, a celebration of the stage. It begins almost offhandedly with a group of actors filing into the theater where they are to perform “King Lear.”

In a light, almost documentary style, Welles satirizes backstage small talk: the complaints about critics, pay and academics. When one performer talks about the need for theater, another corrects him: “Nobody ever needed the theater — except us. Have you ever heard of an unemployed audience?”

When the vain star (Seth Duerr) enters, he informs the ensemble that they will be performing “Moby-Dick” instead of “Lear,” and that he will play Ahab. This framing device provides a justification for the bare-bones adaptation (everyone wears casual clothes and mimes the props), but the director, Marc Silberschatz, is smart to avoid hammering home the theatrical themes, since the play-within-a-play conceit has become a cliché.

Instead, he concentrates on suspending our disbelief, relying on a direct, simple staging that tells the story with gusto and clarity. The cramped theater, a black box with bad sightlines, actually helps give a sense of being trapped on a rickety ship.

Welles, who ruthlessly edited Melville’s novel down to two hours, would no doubt have approved of Dana Sterling’s moody lighting design. But this play rises and falls on the strength of Ahab, and Mr. Duerr is happily up to the challenge. With sunken eyes that betray a touch of madness, he looks like a man losing a battle but refusing to give up.

He doesn’t perform off his fellow actors so much as recite his lines to the heavens, which makes perfect sense, since he’s playing a dictatorial actor playing a dictatorial captain. At his best, Mr. Duerr’s booming baritone even brings to mind Welles himself. Call me impressed.