Accompanying sound effects of footsteps and a wild storm heighten the story’s terror. “The Pit and the Pendulum” follows with an equally passionate Amy Paloma Welch trapped in a dark and unknown space swarming with squeaky rats, facing an immanent and gruesome death– unless she can somehow “MacGyver” her way out.Īlex Pait reads “The Fall of the House of Usher” clearly and calmly, recounting his unforgettable visit to the strange and decaying home of “cadaverous” old friend Roderick Usher– and the coffin of Usher’s dead sister. In its accompanying program, LBSC suggests turning on the video captions to help follow Poe’s dense writing and to compensate for the slight echo from recording in an empty theatre, which helps especially with this first tale. In “The Hero of Halloween: Edgar Allan Poe,” LBSC cast members read four of Poe’s scary short-stories and one poem, the famously dark “The Raven.”Īrtistic Director Brando Cutts starts us off with “The Cask of Amontillado,” reading with feeling between a skull and black candelabra adorned with a spider, while other cast members create creepy music and sound effects, such as a wine bottle opening as our protagonist leads his unwitting and increasingly drunk prey through a catacomb. But the story’s unexpected resolution is surprisingly apt for our times, a potential silver-lining to our current threat. The horrifying events they portray soon become terrifying and finally devastating. Brownfield and the young but composed Wyatt Najarian. Rounding out the effective cast are Matt Brown, R.J. Jo McLachlan stands out as the dauntless female reporter interviewing a Princeton astronomer and a farmer (Andy Kallok) on whose land a mysterious metal object has suddenly plummeted from space.Īnd Joe Montanari amazes with his character accents– including a Kennedy-esque Washington official who mobilizes the army against the evil invaders– and his smooth keyboard skills. The entire cast coordinate extremely well and each contributes excellently to the well-paced production. Updates become more frequent as the horrifying events develop, eventually taking over the night. The story of “War of the Worlds” begins calmly enough on Halloween eve in New York, with a musical radio-broadcast direct from the Plaza Hotel.īut soon enough, the broadcast is interrupted with news of strange events on a New Jersey farm.

The ensemble cast of the Long Beach Shakespeare Company’s streaming radio-play, “War of the

They even perform sound effects and live music from the KBRD station within the Helen Borgers Theatre. Wells’s original novel.Īnd they’ve got it down– the six-member cast’s dramatic radio delivery about an invasion of Martians is sharp and compelling. This is LBSC’s 19th production of the 1938 “War of the Worlds” radio play by Orson Welles, based on Howard E. The Long Beach Shakespeare Company’s (LBSC) streaming productions of “War of the Worlds” and stories by Edgar Allan Poe capture the scary tone we all want right now while stuck in the horror of our confinement. If you’re heeding the advice of health officials and staying home this Saturday instead of trick-or-treating or partying, you are in luck.

Halloween shakespeer