Step back in time with an adaptation of a comedy classic.
Last year marked the 100th anniversary of radio broadcasting. In November 1922 the BBC (then called 2LO) made its first broadcast.
Australia followed in 1923.
Within just a couple of years listeners were enjoying a ‘theatrical experience’ without leaving their own homes as radio plays took to the air, providing a wealth of inexpensive entertainment as well as worthy competition to the new talking movies (‘talkies’) sweeping the world.
Actors wearing tuxedos and Brylcreemed hair, actresses in long gowns ‘dressed to the nines’ would gather round a microphone, often in front of a live audience, while sound effects people created the appropriate noises to convince their audience that the characters really were on a mountain top, a train or a battlefield, and present a theatrical performance just on a canvas of sound.
The production format remains much as it has been for the last century.
A small group of actors playing multiple parts around a microphone, aided and abetted by one or two sound effects people producing sounds in a most creative and often unexpected way.
Crumpling vegetables, punching cabbages, splashing in tubs of water, usually accompanied by technical staff with an extensive library of recorded sounds.
The Mount Players’ first production for 2023 is a BBC radio parody play based on the 1935 Hitchcock thriller, The 39 Steps.
Director John Rowland, who brought audiences Too Many Crooks in 2021, promises to take you, as the live audience in a BBC radio studio, on a thrilling, riotous and hilarious journey.
The play contains every legendary scene from the award-winning movie including the chase on the Flying Scotsman, the escape on the Forth Bridge, the bi-plane crash and the sensational death-defying finale in the London Palladium.
The play runs from Friday February 24 – Sunday March 12.
Fifty per cent of takings from the Thursday night performance will be donated to Gisborne Foodbank.
The Mount Players will also be accepting cash and food donations in the foyer at each performance so please consider this when attending.
For full details on the plays and to book tickets go to www.themountplayers.com or call 5426 1892 for assistance.
