Fictional Behind-the-Scenes Peek at Welles’s “War of the Worlds” Fails to Capitalize on Premise

It’s a promising premise: Orson Welles’s Mercury Players reunite to perform a live musical retelling of their legendary “War of the Worlds” radio broadcast. Unfortunately, mediocre songs, production shortcomings, and the classic misstep of making true events less interesting via needless fictionalization keeps Mid-World Players’ Panic: A Live Radio Musical from being more than a nice idea.

It’s a particular shame because mounting a show that takes place in the confined space of a radio studio is a smart production choice for these pandemic times. Shot with a single, roving handheld camera and little production or editing in Long Beach’s diminutive Found Theatre, initially Panic gets off on the right foot, as Welles (the well-cast Jesse Seann Atkinson) steps to the mic and prepares us for “the entire behind-the-scenes story, warts and all.”

But before long, all of Panic’s warts are in evidence. For no particular reason playwright Stephen Dolginoff puts the Mercury Players in front of a live audience, which gave rise in either Dolginoff’s or director Atkinson’s mind (I haven’t seen the script and therefore can’t say) to the dubious notion of inserting a laugh track into the show — bad enough even if the tinny group guffaws weren’t louder than most of the dialog.

Another production problem is the variability of dialog volume resulting from the sound’s being captured on the video camera’s built-in mic. Shooting in this manner isn’t necessarily misguided — it certainly helps the show feel live — but we lose entire lines when upstage actors speak in low tones. Additionally, the cast would have been better served by wearing soft-soled shoes, as their wingtips and high heels clomp distractingly on the Found’s wood floors. (Thankfully, neither of these problems is as notable during musical numbers.)

Andrew Roberts’s camerawork is hit-and-miss. At his best, Roberts moves with the cast as if he’s a part of the blocking, giving us some unexpectedly pleasing vistas, including a move behind Welles’s shoulder so that we get a view of four of his troupemates confronting him in song. But during the same number there are a few seconds when literally none of the five onstage actors is in-frame — a particularly puzzling gaffe to make the final cut, considering that elsewhere Panic does resort to mid-scene edits. Ultimately, Roberts is too close to the action too often, regularly failing to cover characters when they speak and never once choosing to utilize the Found’s small audience area so that we can have the entire “stage” in view. Not that we miss all that much, since there’s no choreography to speak of. Panic is a musical only in the sense that its characters break into song.

Alas, the songs are Panic’s biggest failing. According to the program, Dolginoff has won an ASCAP songwriting award and been nominated for a few others (e.g., Drama Desk, Outer Critics Circle), so somebody thinks he’s done good work in the past; but all I can say is that the songs in Panic land on my admittedly subjective aural tastebuds as uniformly mediocre and with little variance from one to the next. Although the cast’s vocal abilities are somewhat limited, the material is the real problem.

Same goes for the script. The first one-third of Panic is a relatively uninterrupted discourse on Welles’s massive ego. When we finally get to the “War of the Worlds” broadcast, its conception is relegated to a scant half-dozen lines, with Welles comes up with the conceit basically out of thin air. Dolginoff’s historical cock-up includes writer Howard Koch (Sam Gianfala) taking on the project on his first day with Mercury and producer John Houseman (Jared Raymen) doing his damnedest to prevent Welles’s vision from becoming reality. All of this is needless fictionalization, far less compelling than the way it really went down. And in Dolginoff’s hands the broadcast itself is little more than an afterthought, providing almost no behind-the-scenes view of how the show was produced (e.g., the foley artist has about three things on his effects table and barely ever touches them). When your ostensible climax is perhaps the least interesting part of your show, you’re in trouble.

Mid-World Players sniffed out Panic: A Live Radio Musical as signifying a good idea for a theatrical production during these restrictive times. Unfortunately, script, score, and production all come up short. 

Panic: A Live Radio Musical makes its one-night-only West Coast premiere on Saturday, April 24. To watch, go to Mid-World Players’ GoFundMe page and make a $5 minimum donation after midnight April 23 to get a link that’s good until midnight April 24. For more on Mid-World Players, visit them on Facebook. 

Trailer for Panic: A Live Radio Musical