The Lancaster Players will present “The 39 Steps: A Live Radio Play” at The Lancaster Playhouse, 361 Chesapeake Drive, White Stone. Shows are slated at 8 p.m. March 11, 12, 18, 19, 25 and 26, as well as 3 p.m. March 13 and 20. The theater will open an hour prior to each performance.
Tickets are $25. For reservations, visit www.lancasterplayers.org or call 435-3776.
“The 39 Steps: A Live Radio Play” will take audiences back to the Golden Age of Radio, reported community relations coordinator Karen Stanley. The 1940s was a time of “television without pictures,” when families would pull up a chair and spend an evening in front of their modern electronic home entertainment center and let their imaginations fill in the visuals. Listeners would be treated to live drama, comedy, music and news while sitting beside a piece of furniture about the size of a picnic basket.
The Lux Radio Theatre, a weekly radio anthology series, adapted movies and Broadway plays for broadcast, featuring some of the biggest stars of film and theater. Many of the favorite shows of that era were sponsored and named by advertisers: The Champion Spark Plug Hour, The A&P Gypsies and Smilin’ Ed’s Buster Brown Gang.
Just as with television programs today, commercial advertisements kept these shows on the air. Catchy tunes and jingles promoted products such as Wildroot Cream Oil, Bromo Seltzer and Air Wick, which was touted in song as a “great new discovery.”
Robin Blake, Vicki Kinsel, Lynn McCrobie and Linda Stough will bring their musical talents to The Lancaster Players stage as a vocal harmony group, The Jingle Belles. Reminiscent of the Andrew Sisters or The Harmonics, they are the featured commercial singing group in the staged radio play. Kinsel and McCrobie are new to The Players, while Blake and Stough have directed and acted in several productions. For each performance, three of the four will sing as a trio, said Stanley.
