We’ve done several recreations of classic Golden Age of Radio episodes. These shows — direct re-creations of shows that were originally broadcast in the heyday of radio drama — were PMRP’s mainstay in its early years, and have influenced and inspired many of our later shows with original material (such as the “War of the Worlds” segment in The Big Broadcast of 1938, which was a retelling of some of the events of Orson Welles’ famous broadcast in a new setting, but tried to capture some of the spirit of the original broadcast.
Hallowe’en comes alive! Our Hallowe’en show for 2013 featured our original adaptation of the classic horror film “Night of the Living Dead”, which largely inspired the zombie genre, and our version of the Suspense! episode “Ghost Hunt”, about a skeptic’s stay in a haunted house.
For Boston’s First Night 2009 festivities, the Post Meridian Radio Players were invited to present radio drama performed the way it was back in the 1930's, 40's & 50's. Actors at microphones, live sound effects artists, and recorded audio effects transported the audience from the cockpit of a heroic Do-Gooder's futuristic spaceship in “Countdown to Chaos” to the panic-stricken streets of a city doomed by science gone wrong in “Chicken Heart”!
In October 2005, we re-created Arch Oboler's lost Lights Out! episode “Chicken Heart” as part of Chicken Hearts and Other Parts, a Hallowe’en-themed fundraiser for local filmmaker Chelsea Spear. In addition to “Chicken Heart”, the performance featured “The Atlantis Affair”, “Erasure”, and Improv PoetryProse by nationally-recognized voice artist Lindsay Ellison, and “The Unhappy Medium”, a segment from Spear’s project The Ballad of Burd Janet, a tretelling of the Celtic folktale Tam Lin.
For our second Big Broadcast, performed in October of 2010 at the Somerville Theatre, PMRP returned to the Rooftop Gardens Auditorium at the famed Putnam-Moore department store for another episode of WPM’s Frank Cyrano Byfar Hour to join Frank Cyrano and the gang for great music and lots of Hallowe’en fun, including a special guest appearance by none other than Hollywood horror legend Boris Karloff!. Then we presented another two chilling Tomes of Terror from the WPM archives: “But Oh, What Happened to Hutchings!” which touches among other subjects upon the finer points of cadaver acquisition, and “The Sirens of War” in which a Navy barge carrying munitions to the Gulf of Mexico encounters mysterious and compelling forces along the Missouri.
For our first Big Broadcast, performed at the Somerville Theatre in October 2009, we went back to 1938 with The Frank Cyrano Byfar Hour, as it might have been broadcast from the Rooftop Gardens Auditorium of the Putnam-Moore Department Store in downtown Boston, where we joined Frank, Amelia Adams, Charley Kendall, Jenny Brennan, Lex Concord and the Minutemen and the Chowderhouse Gang for some great music, lots of Halloween fun, and a very special guest star! Then we performed an original adaptation of The War of the Worlds, telling the story of how Boston fared during the famous Martian invasion of 1938, using news bulletins and field reports and dramatic recreations to depict the amazing story of how a North End mobster, an MIT scientist, and the Massachusetts National Guard allied themselves to carry out one final strike against the Martians and drive them from the city! We were joined by Emperor Norton's Stationary Marching Band.
Our performance at Arisia in January 2006 was a recreation of the classic Lights Out! episode “Chicken Heart”. You can buy a CD at our CD Baby store.
Summer Radio Mystery Theatre ’14: Super Sleuths (July 2014) featured Hercule Poirot in “The Case of the Careless Victim”, Lady Molly of Scotland Yard in “The Ninescore Mystery”, and Sherlock Holmes—and Jack the Ripper—in “Sherlock Holmes and the Whitechapel Murders”.
Gort, Klaatu Barada Nikto! From the long-running Lux Radio Theater comes this adaptation of the classic 1951 science-fiction film. Originally airing on January 4th, 1954, this production featured Michael Rennie reprising his performance of Klaatu. Lux Radio Theater was famous for producing radio adaptations of major motion pictures, often with the original lead actors.
This adaptation of Edmund H. North's original film script was written by Milton Geiger. The film script itself was based on the Harry Bates short story “Farewell to the Master”.
