Let’s go back to the 1930’s, where radio rules the world and clear channel didn’t exist. Sounds better already, right? There were no Howard Stern’s or Wendy Williams, shock jocks did not exist. In fact, radio disc jockeys didn’t exist period. There was no television so that meant entertainment was received via radio. Yes, you had your music and announcers but Radio Theater exploded and exposed a whole new world to the masses. People thrived on entertainment and the radio provided that in storytelling, fully equipped with sound effects for the imagination to aid the short or continuing stories from last weeks show.

So with Five Towns College being the epicenter for Long Island entertainment amongst students it only made sense to bring back that age and feeling that only radio theater possessed, before Britney Spears shaved her head and before payola existed. Wednesday night’s performance was history in the making. Five Towns brought together most of their featured majors together for one performance. The performance was split up into three segments, Johnny Got His Gun, The Hitchhiker and The Adventures of Superman.

Johnny Got His Gun may be the most anti-war piece ever written. Written by Dalton Trumbo this touching story is about a soldier who goes off to war only to be placed in a hospital bed after he loses his arms, legs, ears and most of his face in combat, and is now left haunted by his own thoughts. Michael Desjardin (Joe) gives a chilling performance of the soldier – a man who is stuck inside of himself, only left with banging his head in Morse code to communicate what he has to say. The text in his play was heavy, making a strong political statement, and whether you agreed with the libertarian perspective, you couldn’t help but feel horrible for the desperate and lonely Joe (Desjardin) who had only his memories to keep him company. Desjardin not only portrays the inside thoughts of a soldier beautifully but also raise powerful questions such as “Were the young men thinking about liberty as they died?” It takes an individual with range to dig deep inside, and Desjardin definitely dug deep. Up on the stage behind the microphone, Desjardin wasn’t an actor holding a script, he represented a son, a man, and a friend who had gone out to fight for liberty but ended up losing everything in the process.

The second segment, “The Hitchhiker” is a comedic and twisted story about Ronald Adams (Randy Sobel) a man who treks from New York to California and mid way along the trip dangerously encounters a Hitchhiker (Kevin Story) whom he almost hits. Obsessed with the encounter Ronald envisions the hitchhiker multiple times, which leads him to believe he’s being haunted. The marvelous twist comes when Ronald calls his mother only to find out she’s been sedated because of the death of her only son (the caller himself). Randy Sobel was made for this role and gives wonderfully comical and eerie performance of a man slowly going insane. Another well-earned performance was by Jennifer Spears who portrayed the woman character who encounters the paranoid Adams, and wants no part in his journey to rid the Hitchhiker. Jennifer brought the unnamed character to life with her colorful amusing performance and was definitely a highlight of this story. Lastly was “The Adventures of Superman”. The tone of this story was definitely different from the first two pieces but we all needed to be saved by the hero after the dark pieces before. This was such a treat and the highlight of the piece were not only the superhero’s Superman (Kevin Story) and Batman (Jeff Wise) coming together but the sound effects that were used right on stage to portray the actions as the heroes saved the world.

From the thought provoking pieces to the childhood fantasy acted out right on the FTC stage this performance not only reaffirmed the talent that exudes from our very own home but it almost makes you want to get lost in the 1940’s – they definitely knew what entertainment was all about.

This entry was posted on Saturday, April 14th, 2007 at 6:06 pm and is filed under Five Towns College Report. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.