Directed by Jarrad West
Canberra REP at
Theatre 3 to 16 June
Reviewed by Len Power
7 June 2018
‘Radio On Repertory Lane’ is a performance of a collection
of mostly radio scripts. A few of the scripts
used originated on television and these were, curiously, the most enjoyable
ones in the show.
Two episodes of the serial, ‘Flash Gordon’, were presented
at the start and end of the show. They
weren’t engaging because we’re not as familiar with the characters as we would
be if we’d been following the show avidly week after week as people did back
then.
‘Blue Hills’ was introduced by narrator, Michael Cooper, in
a tone that implied it wasn’t very good and then some of the cast played it as
a send-up, making it hard to see what made the show one of the most famous of
its time.
The Agatha Christie Poirot play had a dull script but Tony Turner
was fun as Poirot and Ylaria Rogers really captured the style and spirit of a glamorous
radio performer before a live audience.
While the radio scripts presented were all from an earlier time, ‘Argument’, ‘The Good Old Days’, ‘Ones’ and ‘The Last Supper’ had all been
seen on television in the 1970s. While
entertaining, they were from a different era and didn’t really fit in with the nostalgic
radio theme of the show.
Director, Jarrad West had gathered a strong cast of performers
who had a lot of fun with the material. Unfortunately
it wasn’t as much fun for the audience.
Played without interval for 90 minutes, it really started to drag after
a while. Maybe including some old radio
commercials might have helped as an amusing break from some of the less
interesting scripts.
Much of the fun of watching a recreation of a radio
performance is in seeing the sound effects being performed. This aspect should have been given more prominence
closer to the audience. Situated at the
back of the set, many of the effects were lost and generally needed better amplification. The level of background
music often swamped them as well.
While the cast gave good vocal performances, the show would
have been more successful if a stronger effort had been put into recreating the
era and the ambience of radio actors performing before a live audience. Just performing the scripts into microphones
as if the live audience mostly didn’t exist, resulted in a less than memorable
show.
Len Power’s reviews
are also broadcast on his ‘On Stage’ performing arts radio program on Mondays
and Wednesdays from 3.30pm on Artsound FM 92.7.
