Listen Up! – “Radio Star” Tells A Tale Of Dames, Dicks And Double-Crossers
by Karen Tortora-Lee on February 18, 2010
While sitting in the audience of Tanya O’Debra’s Radio Star (Directed by Peter Cook) you may be tempted to close your eyes and pretend you’re sitting around the 1941 Philco radio with Dad smoking his pipe nearby while little Sally sits on the floor doing her arithmetic and Billy works on his model air plane. Breathe in deeply enough and you can smell that meatloaf mom is cooking! Yes, you may be tempted, but I’d suggest keeping your eyes open to enjoy every delicious hand-in-a-tap-shoe bit of foley art you can drink in. For while it would be just as much fun to stage direct the story in your mind’s eye, the real joy of Radio Star is watching Ms. O’Debra seamlessly transform herself from saucy dame Fanny LaRue to hard-boiled private dick, Nick McKittrick, to dopey company schlep Wally, to hearty Irish Cop with little more than a change of facial expression. Welcome to Radio Star, where the year is 1941, the story is decidedly campy, and the anachronisms are made of easter eggs.
