Reviewed Thursday 31st October 2013
On the evening of 30th October, 1938,
Orson Welles broadcast a dramatisation of the 1898 novel,
The War of the Worlds, by
H. G. Wells. Seventy five years and one day later the South Australian Radio Collective, supported by Splash Adelaide, played a recording of that radio play to an audience who assembled in Whitmore Square in Adelaide especially to hear this work. Sitting on rugs or in deck chairs, around 300 hundred people sat in almost silence, mobile telephones switched off, their focus entirely on the performance.
The members of the Collective are
Chris Brunner,
Carly Nason,
Chrissy Kavanagh,
Natalie Clara Oliveri,
Catherine Zengerer, and
Annie Hastwell. The sound technicians for the evening were
Ian B Newton and
Philip Van Hout, and DJ Tony Corso was on hand to play lots of great music from the 1930s before the main event, including loads of Big Band recordings that had people dancing. There were even "cigarette" girls,
Lisa Burns,
Karen Burns, and Aimee Thatcher, selling popcorn for a mere dollar. As the Collective suggested in their advertising, many of the audience came dressed in 1930s style.
When
The Mercury Theatre on the Air radio play went to air live in 1938, some people thought was a real series of news bulletins, and reacted in fear. The 1975 film, The Night That Panicked America, recounted what happened that night. There is debate about how big the panic really was, as the show did not have a particularly large audience and it has been suggested that the facts were exaggerated by print media who had lost a lot of advertising to radio.
The novel had the first Martian cylinder landing at Horsell Common, near Woking in Surrey, southern England but, to make it relevant, the CBS radio play set it in Grover's Mill, New Jersey and updated it from the 19th Century. The adaptation was written by
Howard Koch and
Anne Froelick, with some input from Welles, who was the director and narrator, as well as other members of the staff.
In the early parts of the play there were a few giggles at the quaintness of the acting style and the technical quality but, as it progressed, people became absorbed in the play and the giggling stopped. The only extraneous sounds for most of the play came from traffic and people at some distance away, which showed how ell this piece stands up to the test of time.
I grew up when there was no television and entertainment came via the wireless, which included radio plays and serials. Like books, of which I could never get enough, these radio plays demanded the use of the imagination and had enormous numbers of listeners glued to the wireless set, families sitting around it in silence absorbing the performance. That was what I experienced once again at this excellent outdoor event, sitting with a big crowd of friends and strangers, all sharing a common experience, but each interpreting it differently, personally in their own mind's eye.
Sitting there in the dark, after the sun's last rays had gone, one forgot about those around the area and became lost in this imaginary world of death and destruction, where humanity was being slowly eliminated by Martians, and one man was trying to survive against all odds, telling us his story as he had written it down as he fled the heat rays and poisonous gases.
We were transported to a much simpler time, before any powerful electronics, instant communication, and research facilities at the touch of a mouse button. The wireless had valves and had to be turned on a short time before a programme began, so that the set had time to warm up. Telephones were not in every home. One went to the telephone box to make a call. Nobody had one in the house just for the sake of it, unless they were very wealthy. The news came from newspapers, which meant it was delayed by publishing times, or the wireless. It is easy to see how anybody who tuned in late and missed the beginning could have mistaken the first part of the broadcast for real on the spot news reporting.
Sitting there in the dark, with only the recording and many other silent shapes, it was probably as near as one could get to being back there in 1938. It was a unique experience and one that I am glad that I did not miss. The South Australian Radio Collective, and all who worked with them on this project deserve to be very proud of what they achieved, and they should need no further encouragement than their overwhelming success, and the positive feedback from those who attended, to follow up with similar endeavours.
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