Radio Mystery Plays

Sit back and close your eyes surrendering to the sweet bliss, not of sleep, but of imagination.  Such are the days of the old time radio mystery plays.  Let the mind fill in the blanks with wild flights of fancy as actors read fascinating scripts over the magic airways.  The Jewel Box Theatre brings us back to our imagination with “Mystery Radio Plays.”

 Artistic Director Chuck Tweed in collaboration with Director Linda McDonald visits cyber-space for several pre-television radio plays and presents them along with a few commercials as “Mystery Radio Plays”.  All four scripts are approximately one half hour in length and separated into two acts.  These excellent episodes are in the public domain and no authors could be found.  Unfortunately they can not be credited for work that definitely stands the test of time!  The radio plays are:  “The Thought”, “Alive in the Grave”, “The Undead” and “Operation Tomorrow”.  McDonald directs a cast that does justice to the work – ask anyone who closes their eyes for the first moments of each episode.  Minds are wide awake and feeling 40 years younger! 

McDonald handles the cast beautifully and with excellent support from Stage Manager, James Gordon.  Richard Howell has designed a wonderful set including accurate sound effects paraphernalia that should be the envy of every radio station in the country. 

However, this genius idea is flawed in execution.  To set up the presentation, an introduction precedes each act as a prologue.  The ‘green room’ of fictional radio station KJBX in Oklahoma City is where each act begins.  Tweed and McDonald set the green room in the entire Jewel Box thrust stage.  Immediately, the action moves to the production of the radio plays.  Crowded into a very small elevated space in back, all of the main events are seen across a broad expanse of unused space.  The actors handle the intimacy exceptionally well under McDonald’s direction, but the area separating the action from the audience is far too large for far too long.