Can there by anyone who doesn't appreciate the warm sepia glow of old time radio broadcasts? Of course, many favorite films from the 1930s and 1940s provide a similar feeling of nostalgia, but their images make a different experience. An old-time radio broadcast was magic because it came right into your home and into your head. Millions of Americans shared the experience of being, literally, "the radio audience" -- from audire, Latin, "to listen."
Those recordings and films remain enshrined in American memory, in part because of the portrayal of a simpler America -- one where folks were decent, did their duty, and agreed that America was headed for a brighter day, no matter how difficult the present circumstances. One proof of that mythic permanence in the American consciousness: this happy little warm kaleidoscope of a musical play evokes Christmastime in 1942 at a rundown radio studio in New York City. The play premiered in late 1979 -- 28 years ago.
Director Jennifer McKenna and the Wimberley Players do a fine job of creating the story, which starts slowly as the radio players arrive, chat, bicker and joke. This is a big cast -- 13 players and seven musicians -- and most of them are onstage throughout. That requires a lot of blocking and a lot of concentration, helped out by the superbly designed and finished set. The theatre audience becomes the studio audience, responding appropriately to the applause signs. They get involved in all those secondary stories and relationships unfolding behind the folks currently talking into the big old clunky microphones down front.
present The 1940s Radio Hour by Walton Jones Feb. 12 - March 7, 2010
It is December 1942, and our troops overseas are listening to the radio for news and entertainment from back home. The 1940’s Radio Hour, written by Walton Jones, is opening at the Wimberley Playhouse February 12, is a nostalgic musical about a radio broadcast – but this time you, the playgoers, are the actual audience.
Reminiscent of the setting of the recent film, A Prairie Home Companion, the play shows how a radio broadcast is put together. Only this time the music is not country, but favorite old ballads from the 40’s – “Kalamazoo,” “Blue Moon, “Ain’t She Sweet?” “Blues in the Night,” “You Go to My Head,” “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy,” and many others. The music will be presented onstage by a small orchestra consisting of bass (Guy Ben Moshe), trumpet (Sean Palmer), trombone (Tom Van Tassel), drums (John King), piano (Robert FitzGerald), saxophone (Robert Eaton) and tenor sax (Donna Heath).
The 1940’s Radio Hour is directed by Jennifer McKenna, new to the Wimberley Playhouse but known in Austin theatre (Crimes of the Heart at City Theatre and The Diaries of Adam and Eve at the Baker Theatre).
by Daniel Sullivan and the Seattle Repertory Theatre Directed by Dawn Youngs
A small professional theater company prepares for their annual cash-cow production of "A Christmas Carol." Things begin to look as bleak as Dickens's London as soon as the curtain opens. The production's four-day rehearsal schedule seems woefully inadequate, and the company accountant has just informed the director that low ticket sales have left them on the verge of bankruptcy. Filled with hilarious sequences of physical comedy, Inspecting Carol is an immensely entertaining treat that will kick off your holiday season in style.
Nathan Villareal's agile clowning and appealing tenor voice are at the heart of the Wimberley Players' production of Stop The World, I Want to Get Off, playing weekends through August 23. As Littlechap, the Everyman in this circus-themed musical entertainment, Villareal gives us a cocky Cockney social climber, resembling actor/pop singer Anthony Newley, who put the show together with composer Leslie Bricusse in 1961.
The show is an interesting mix of genres, part cabaret and part medieval morality play. The white-face pantomime makeup appears to be a direct imitation of the visual stylings of French mime Marcel Marceau, who had become an international star in the decade preceding Stop The World. Littlechap and the rest of the cast use some amusing pantomime gestures, including a quirky little sequence of salutation, crossed-hands and quiver to suggest that randy Littlechap is successfully seducing a woman character.
Part of the joke is that this show is the opposite of a pantomime: it's a musical with both words and lyrics, featuring ballads that entered immediately into the canon of popular song. I never saw Stop The World, the unsuccessful 1966 film version of it, or the short-lived update and revival attempted in 1978 by Sammy Davis, Jr. But the 1960s were themed by Tony Bennett, Barbara Streisand, Sammy Davis, Jr. and others with recordings of Newley's Once In A Lifetime, Gonna Build A Mountain and, most memorably, What Kind of Fool Am I? Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .
