Blurring the lines of reality and fiction, this new virtual production harkens us back to Mercury Theatre on the Air’s 1938 War of the Worlds, an attempted Halloween prank which morphed into pandemonium when listeners missed the broadcast’s introduction and believed that reporters were live in Grovers Mill, New Jersey witnessing a real alien invasion.
The now infamous radio play, War of the Worlds, based on the classic novel by H.G. Wells, is the concoction of the brilliant Orson Welles and was adapted for this format by Howard E. Koch of Casablanca fame. Welles, Koch, and the talented team of Mercury Theatre on the Air transformed the novel almost overnight, changing the setting to local Grovers Mill farmland, and converting the rhetoric into late-breaking news bulletins. This extraterrestrial takeover is sure to thrill and chill audiences during our current pandemic crisis which has been filled with its own uncertainty, intermissions, and anticipation.
