Watching 'radio drama' play out proves delightful
The Houston Chronicle, Theater Review, November 18, 2007
By Everett Evans

Some old-time entertainment phenomena actually are timelessly cool.

Take the radio drama — especially any serial in the sci-fi/adventure mode.

Why else would stage, screen and TV keep returning to this milieu? In our age of computer-generated films that can depict absolutely anything, there's something appealing about the radio format, with the home audience imagining the action, while the studio audience witnesses the actors making believe with minimal staging and one guy's resourceful use of everyday objects creating myriad sound effects.

That's precisely why The Intergalactic Nemesis proved such a delight in its Friday night performance at Wortham Center. The one-night stand, presented by Society for the Performing Arts, marked the Houston debut of Salvage Vanguard Theatre, a venturesome young Austin troupe.

The script, by Jason Neulander and Chad Nichols, offered droll nonsense about an intrepid gal reporter and her chipper assistant battling invading sludge monsters from the planet Zygon.

Neulander's direction kept the energy high, with enough movement to keep the presentation from seeming static. Best of all, his terrific cast maintained the right balance of tongue-in-cheek playfulness and straight-faced earnestness.

Lee Eddy was priceless as ace reporter Molly Sloan: tough, fast-talking, unflappable. Inevitably, she seemed to be channeling all those brash 1930s career women played by Rosalind Russell and Katharine Hepburn.

David Higgins made an indefatigably chipper Timmy Mendez, game for anything, the type of sidekick prone to bursts of "Gosh!" and "Holy moley!"

Brent Werzner projected stalwart heroism as Ben Wilcott, the man from the future, who led Molly and Timmy to their rendezvous with destiny. I liked the sincerity of his challenge to the invading Zygonians: "You'll die a fiery death before I'll let you take control of this planet."

L.B. Deyo dispatched his announcer's chores with brio and amusingly filled several other roles. One brief turn handed him one of the evening's best lines: "Did you really think you could defeat me, the Queen of the Zygonians? Prepare to meet your fate!"

Michael Joplin also handled multiple roles, most notably the sinister mesmerist Mysterion, a traitor working for the Zygonians (how low can you get?)

As crucial as anyone were sound effects artist Buzz Moran and pianist (and composer) Graham Reynolds, whose efforts enhanced the show throughout.

I'd imagine that anyone who met this intimate spectacle in the spirit in which it was presented found The Intergalactic Nemesis a blast.

---

Nemesis Sends Fans Back To The Days Of Radio
Austin-American Statesman/XLent, June 6, 2002
By Michal Barnes

Close your eyes the next time you watch television. Try to decipher the stories through speech and other sounds. You have just approximated the long-ago world of radio drama, when virtually every American family tuned into comedies, soap operas, children's programs and dramatic serials. "I loved the cliff-hanger episode endings," says free-lance art director Michael Sullivan, whose romance with radio drama began in 1946 when he was confined in an isolation ward for scarlet fever. "I would spend imagination time during the following week devising possible escape scenarios for Zorro or Flash Gordon. But the movies gave too much away. Radio allowed more play room for the imagination, and I tended to stick with the radio stories well into the invasion of television into our home."

Sullivan is among the Austinites of a certain age who grew up with radio but now are drawn to staged radio dramas, such as Salvage Vanguard Theater's "The lntergalactic Nemesis Redux!," a science-fiction serial and a surprise hit for the alternative company.

"Listening to 'The lntergalactic Nemesis' was like a throwback to that earlier, fully imaginative age of my youth," Sullivan says. "I allowed time between the episodes so I could solve the cliff hangers in my own way, before returning to hear the actual outcomes."

Salvage Vanguard rotates "The Intergalactic Nemesis" and "The Return of the Intergalactic Nemesis" Friday through June 29 at Gallery Lombardi. In both dramas, a gritty female reporter and her intrepid assistant investigate a man from the future who has returned to 1933 Earth to fight a sludge-based life-form from the planet Zygon. Of course, the fate of the universe hangs in the balance.

"Certainly the'Nemesis' shows take me back to the days when we all gathered round a radio," says teacher and performer Latifah Taormina. "We kids would like to be as close to the the speaker as possible, and then we'd shut our eyes to create fantasy illustrations to go along with all that we were hearing."

Radio was salvation for many children of pre-television America, especially if they lived in a small town.

'I was born and brought up in a town in Central Maine," says retired minister and hotel administrator Allan Tingley. "Most of the deliveries were done by horse and wagon. By 1935, the most cherished possession in every home was the radio, be it a cabinet or a huge plug-in RCA. There were very few stations one could receive in the beginning, but we were close enough to Boston that WGBH was the best."

Those who recollect radio days emphasize its routines and rewards.

"News came on in the morning noon and about 6 p.m.," Tingley says. "I remember getting up in the morning and Mother would have the radio on a kids' show. My brother, sister and I would grab our clothes and stand in front of the radio and get dressed a fast as we could, since the jingle went: 'Get your clothes together, in front of the radio. Hurry now don't be slow.' The announcer would play a sound that he said was an X-ray machine, and he could tell who got dressed faster — the boys or the girls. It was a fight to the finish every morning."

Sound eflects, or "foley," were essential to the allure.

"Like all kids, we were all greaily fascinated with how they really did all the sound effects we were hearing,' Taormina says. "So, as kids, we would delight in learning such awesome tricks of the trade. Discovering, for instance, that you could create the etfect of someone walking tbrough the snow by rhythmically squeezing a box of corn starch was the kind of knowledge that could advance your status among your peers as much as learning to do a two-fingered whistle."

And radio drama was not all.

"My taste was childishly eclectic," says Sullivan. "My family enjoyed comedies, westerns, detective stories and mysteries. But my favorites were bizarre tales and space adventures, 'The Whistler,' 'Captain Midnight,' 'Inner Sanctum' and 'Space Patrol' — or was it 'Cadets'? — being the most anticipated."

"'Nemesis' is really more good fun," Taormina says. Director Jason Neulander "captures this style well. lots of fun, but … where is anything like a decoder ring? Has he approached Ovaltine to see if they might sponsor the serles?"

###