It’s a play wrapped up in a radio play and it’s onstage and on air later this week, just in time for Christmas.
Lyons Township High School is gearing up to perform “A Christmas Carol: The Radio Play” and will go on live at the North Campus’ Reber Center Thursday through Saturday while also simulcast via WLTL, the student-run radio station, just in time for Christmas.
The play, by John Landry, runs about an hour and it’s the familiar 19th Century Dickens tale of Scrooge, three ghosts and a late Christmas redemption all told via a 1940s radio soundstage as part of a New York City winter broadcast. Language arts teacher and theater faculty sponsor Mike Kuehl is directing the production.
This isn’t the first time the theater has put on a Landry Christmas radio stage play — a few years ago students performed “It’s a Wonderful Life: A Live Radio Play” for local audiences. Kuehl said the medium-bending effort is both a fascinating in-person look at how radio productions can work and it’s a bit easier to produce a stage play that’s set on a radio stage, especially given the tight holiday schedules of students plus next week’s testing schedules.
“We don’t think of it as doing a Christmas play, it just lends itself to doing that. We think of it as a radio play,” said Kuehl.
A radio play — at least one set in the 1940s — offers live audiences a chance to see a bit behind the curtain. The music is played on a piano on stage in real time by actors, the foley sounds (realistic background sound effects are performed on stage in real time in front of the audience) and actors … well, the actors play midcentury American actors in period costumes playing 19th century English roles in front of a bank of microphones — just as radio actors might.
Taken together, Kuehl said he believes the production will be fun for audiences as well as the students.
“It’s a really fun thing to try and do the live sound effects,” he said. “Getting to see the live foley artists on stage doing the live sound effects, it’s pretty fun.”
During Monday’s rehearsal this slight time trip led to a question from actor Tommy Riordan who plays Scrooge. Riordan, as the rest of the voice talent, must switch from an American accent when not playing Scrooge to an English accent and he asked how he should approach the microphones. Should he walk toward them as Scrooge or as an American actor? Actor, it turns out — Scrooge is on mic. Riordan has a background both at WTTL and the LTHS stage, though he’s never been part of a partnered production before.
“I made a few promos for some radio shows but no,” he said. Still, he said he enjoyed the experience and generally the cast hasn’t had any questions about how to play their characters.
“I mean, that’s just the first time I’ve had a real question about it,” he said. “Other than that, it’s been pretty streamlined.”
Even so, it’s not exactly “A Christmas Carol.” Listeners at home could get a better sense of the source material through imagination — aside from some period-specific radio ads and station tags — but the live audience will see 1940s dress on characters supposedly caught in the 19th century.
“I think its definitely different, but it’s pretty cool,” Riordan said. “It’s an interesting way to set this production apart from any other production of “A Christmas Carol” because you can see any other production and it would look straight out of Dickens.”
Additionally, Kuehl said it’s a fun way to get the radio department involved.
“I like being able to work with the radio station,” he said.
Kuehl mentioned he’d like to work with the television department, but doing a live television broadcast can be more expensive simply because the getting the broadcast rights costs more. Even so, he said he’s happy to combine departments when possible.
“Any time we can integrate other students is fantastic,” he said.
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The other big advantage for Riordan and his fellow radio actors is, they will be on book. They needn’t be — most lines are memorized by now, Kuehl said — but as in a radio show, scripts are on hand, so should actors fear a fumble, the text is literally at hand.
With mere days before opening night, Riordan said the students are ready.
“I think we’re feeling it’s pretty solid, we’re just figuring out the costumes and the hair,” he said.
Jesse Wright is a freelance reporter for Pioneer Press.