Moby Dick

[Tony]

Just Listened to the '46 CBS Summer Mercury Theatre "Moby Dick", which I hadn't realized existed until recently; it's fantastic, and surprising in that the voice Welles uses for Ahab is very different from those 1970s home movies he made with Graver of him doing readings. This is a simple, but effective production, focussing on Ahab's dialogue, with minimal sound effects, nevertheless important as one of the few documents we have of what the play might have been like (damn that Robert Shaw!). It's also a bit of history, in that it was the last broadcast of a Mercury radio show, with that familiar, if sacharrine Tchaikovsky theme. As Heyer says in his book:

"Welles reading Melville is nothing less than mesmerizing- a near-perfect blend of voice and text."

One dearly wishes he had been able to direct a movie version.

[Terry]

That's a great episode. I think there were two more after that. I think Lear was the final in that series, though I could be mistaken. That is an eccentric performance as Ahab, and I quite like it.