New show links HG Wells’s sci-fi novel and Orson Welles’s 1938 radio adaptation and explores climate of fear preceding the US presidential election
It is one of the most famous radio broadcasts of all time and turned its 23-year-old narrator-director, Orson Welles, into a household name. Welles was both celebrated as a genius and vilified as a prankster when his innovative dramatisation of HG Wells’s science fiction classic The War of the Worlds aired in 1938. The story was told through a series of news bulletins, interrupting a music programme, giving breathless reports about a Martian army invading the US. Listeners who tuned in midway believed it all to be true.
Or did they? A new theatre production from the British company Rhum and Clay will explore that notion of fear sweeping across America, and draw parallels between the climate of heightened fear in 1938 and the febrile run-up to the 2016 US presidential election.
Continue reading...
0 comments:
Post a Comment