‘Toby and the Wolf’ is a simple cautionary tale of an old dog (or an old, dogged type of man) who is seduced, by the superficial charm and rhetoric of a wolf, into betraying his master with almost disastrous results. In this episode, we see Toby going along with a plan by the Wolf to attack and then eat Toby’s master’s favourite ram. The plot goes horribly wrong, the ram easily fights off the Wolf and, in the ensuing confusion brought about by the highly excitable ram, the Master shoots the Wolf in the backside leaving the barking Toby with time to lie back and savour this unexpected turn of events.
Although the action in this episode gives every appearance of being chaotic, even anarchic, it is in fact very carefully choreographed. Director Melly Still worked intensively with the actors in rehearsal to
create a fight sequence that was effective for the audience and safe for the actors. There is little room for improvisation or spontaneity in elaborate work of this kind if the actors are to succeed in creating the tremendous energy required by the story.
Creating the personalities of the animals was also an ongoing process that Melly and the actors worked on during rehearsals.
The staging of
the fight scene involved many different visual elements: the actors performing, musician Terje Isungset centre stage, and drawings of scenery projected as a background. All of these elements competed for the attention of the audience, and actor Elliot Levey tells us that during rehearsals, it was
a challenge to work out the focus for different parts of the scene. He also found it hard to gauge
how the audience would respond to the humour, since reactions would vary from night to night depending on intricacies in the acting and the tastes of each audience.