In 1938, a radio station peddled fiction as fact and the resultant broadcast was taken as gospel by a small number of listeners in whose households it is said panic and hysteria ensued.

That broadcast was, of course, Orson Welles’ dramatic adaptation of H G Wells’ novel The War of the Worlds, often referred to as the first in the sci-fi genre.

A prime example of what one of four actors in Rhum & Clay theatre company’s impressive ensemble (which includes Julian Spooner who co-directs with Hamish MacDougall) calls the gullibility of Americans.

Fast forward 80 years.

Change the medium from radio to social media and 24/7 news; the content from alien invasion to immigrants and asylum seekers, Brexit and Trump; and the intent from dramatic entertainment to deliberate misinformation (£350 million on the back of a Vote Leave bus, Pizzagate conspiracy theories linking Clinton to a child trafficking ring). And the gullible few become the converted many whose votes wage a war – not of but at the world.

Using an abridged retelling of Orson Welles’ radio drama as a springboard into a contemporary investigation into “a family built on secrets”, writer Isley Lynn together with the collaborative ensemble of Spooner, Jess Mabel Jones, Amalia Vitale and Matthew Wells have created a fascinating mystery which hooks the audience from the off and over the course of 100 engrossing minutes reels them in to join the dots between past and present, truth and fake news.

The impressive style of which – bolstered by Bethany Wells’ bare canvas of a radio soundstage, through the gauze walls of which Nick Flintoff and Pete Maxey’s lighting design illuminates the shadows of secrets and silence – meeting the high standards of Spooner’s pushy producer in that it goes in for the jugular, resonates with the now and makes the unique universal. To which I would add: fast-paced, fat-free and “bigly” funny.

Peter Callaghan
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