Written by Robert E. Sherwood
Produced & Directed by Pete Lutz
Cast: Darren Rockhold, Les Marsden, Gino C. Vianelli, Bobby Vela, Paul Arbisi, Carole Krohn, Ebony Rose, Chuck Wilson, Stephanie Stearns Dulli, David Ian, Dana Gonsalves, Duane Noch, Tre’ Minor, Frank Guglielmelli, Pete Lutz
N.B. If you enjoy these reviews – in addition to checking out the awesome work featured, why not have a look at London After Midnight, starring Art Malik or Wrong Dimension’s Twilight Meridian?
Everyone who makes audio fiction, of any description, know how much of a debt we owe the long, rich history of radio drama of the past. In the UK, perhaps, we might summon the decades of BBC radio plays. In the US, the countless number of plays and films performed for radio, often featuring their original casts. Radio was a living medium and, often, a way for a wider audience to experience works to which they had not had access in the theatre or even wanted to revisit after a cinema viewing.
The Petrified Forest is a two-act play by Robert E. Sherwood, which ran on the Broadway stage in 1935 and was adapted to film the following year. Both of these productions, along with the later 1955 television adaptation, featured the legendary Humphrey Bogart as Duke Mantee.
There was also, and here is where the wireless comes into play, a 1953 radio adaptation, produced by NBC under their strand “Best Plays”. And it is this version that Pete Lutz and the Narada Radio Company have lovingly recreated.
The play itself is excellent, more than earning its multiple adaptations, taking place in Depression-era Arizona amongst the denizens of the Black Mesa B-B-Q and Filling Station – drifters, war brides, relics of the Old West, employees and customers. All caught up in a set of fateful events.
This diverse cast of characters are wonderfully inhabited by the members of Narada, including Dana Gonsalves in the desperate gangster role once taken by Bogey.
What struck me most about this adaptation, aside from its quality, is that it not only stands on its own feet as a fine adaptation of a classic play, but also manages to replicate the feel of 20th century radio drama, naturally and without pastiche. It’s somehow embedded in the sound design, the recording and the performances. It has that attention to detail that only comes from a deep love for both the material and the medium.
It’s an absorbing take on a fascinating play and I highly recommend you listen to it here.
Kenton Hall 