Last week and this coming weekend, the RC Players are presenting LSA senior Michael Zilberman's play about the creation of mass terror brought by the frenzied "War of the Worlds" radio broadcast of 1938. "Mercury," directed by Alex Lutz, specifically details the life of the radio drama's performer, Orson Welles. While the play creates a negative image of Welles, it presents to the audience the secret behind the panic-inducing broadcast.
The notorious "War of the Worlds" broadcast was a Halloween prank played by Orson Welles and his fellow CBS radio actors on the night before Halloween in 1938. Afterward, when everyone discovered the hoax, Welles gained popularity and became a household name, paving his road to Hollywood.
The play as a whole runs well; Zilberman, a former Michigan Daily staff writer, should be commended for his playwriting. It is obvious that the story behind "War of the Worlds" was well researched, but the text does not account fully for Welles' enigmatic persona.
Basically, each scene is an account of a certain day in the life of Welles, and tells of his business relationship with John Houseman, the producer for CBS Radio's "The Mercury Theater." Describing his beginning as a stage actor, the story goes on to explain how Houseman hires Welles for the show, and how the idea for the radio broadcast of "War of the Worlds" jumped into Welles' mind.
While the performances of its lead actors are not exactly impressive, they serve the purpose of the show quite well. Ryan Sherriff as John Houseman shined in a few comical moments. Rebecca Fried who played Ann Froelisch, Houseman's secretary and love interest of Welles, gave a good performance. Her character fits very well into the scenario, giving the show much needed comic relief. Benjamin Barnett's impersonation of Orson Welles was rather dry and stuffy. At times, Barnett didn't seem like he could win the hearts of fans on Broadway or on the radio. He also didn't seem to fit the alcoholic womanizer stereotype that the play tries to present Welles as; it takes more than good looks to impress a woman, and his character was dull and arrogant.
The play specifically concentrates on an instance in which Welles tries to reinvent Shakespeare's famous "Macbeth", and he sets it in the wild African jungle. He is preparing the play for a radio broadcast, and instead of using the traditional witches that Shakespeare had intended, he makes them to be voodoo-chanting witch doctors, played hysterically by Sara Smith, Amy Aisen, and Becky Katzman. This scene identifies very well with the original Welles, who always wanted to reinterpret old stories and make them his own.
The show is told with a few flashbacks, which make the show hard to follow if you aren't paying attention to the slide projections which detail the time and setting of each scene. One useful adage with the images projected on the back wall of the stage are the recreated front pages of the Arts and Leisure section of the "New York Times," which inform the audience of changes in the plot. The play refers back to the Hindenberg explosion a number of times, and as a few scenes of the burning blimp are projected on stage, the original radio news broadcast of the disaster is played in the background. The old recordings of the broadcasts are in poor condition, and aren't exactly intelligible, causing confusion for those who can't strain to hear the words.
The climactic scene of the play which features a recreation of the famous broadcast is not to be missed. Hysterically written and performed, it is all the reason to see "Mercury." The show can be seen again this weekend at the RC Auditorium in East Quad. It gives the audience a perfect account of the reality of that moment in American history, when a man could cause so much anxiety with a practical joke.
n "Mercury" contiunes this weekend with shows on Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m. and Sunday at 2 p.m.