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This was an interesting piece, reminiscent of the days where one got their entertainment gathered around the family radio set, rather then the TV or computer. In in intimate setting, we were treated to a reading of one of the most famous pieces of Science fiction ever written. Called “Radio Theater” because of it’s likening to the performances on the radio (complete with audio effects like walking across the leaves, etc) but without the visual of the actual person producing the effects. Preformed by two actors, FRANK ZILINYI and KATE SIEPERT who acted as the genius gentlemen traveller and his wife. The genius gentleman has created a machine in which he is able to transport himself through time- he goes to the far distant future. He experiences a variety of situations which he relates to his wife in a single conversation between them
This was modified for the stage performance from the original “Time Machine”, where the time traveler accounts his adventures to a group of weekly dinner guests.
PRESENTS
IN
H.G. WELLS’ THE TIME MACHINE
FRANK ZILINYI has appeared in Radiotheatre’s The Haunting of 85 East 4th Street 2006/10, Frankenstein, Dracula, The War of the Worlds, The Invisible Man, King Kong 08, Dracula’s Guest, The Black Cat, The Pit and the Pendulum, The Tell Tale Heart, The Oval Portrait, The Murders in the Rue Morgue, The Sphinx, William Wilson, The Case of M.Valdemar, The Oblong Box, Hop Frog, The Premature Burial, The Masque of the Red Death, The System of Dr.Tarr and Prof.Fether, The Cask of Amontillado. For Inwood Shakespeare Festival: Zorro, Dracula, The Arabian Nights, The Three Musketeers, The Merry Wives of Windsor, Treasure Island
KATE SIEPERT recently appeared as Joyce in RUFFIAN ON THE STAIR (Joe Orton Festival, The Secret Theatre). Other favorite productions include: SERVANT OF TWO MASTERS (The Secret Theatre, NY); JANE AUSTEN’S EMMA (Tobacco Factory, UK); BRÖNTE (BOVTS, UK); OTHELLO (BOVTS, UK); MERCHANT OF VENICE (McPherson Theatre, IL); SEVEN DEADLY SINS (Live Bait Theatre, IL). Kate also trained & performed for 5 years at Chicago’s ImprovOlympic. She holds a BFA from Illinois Wesleyan University and a Masters Certificate in Acting from the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School in the UK. www.katesiepert.com
The show was really cool, a cerebral experience, where you could visualize the story in your mind. I really liked the lack of “show” and the the story unfolding in front of us, where we could feel transported (like the time traveler himself!)
Here is a short synapses of the book, and therefor the show!
The book’s protagonist is an English scientist and gentleman inventor living in Richmond, Surrey, identified by a narrator simply as the Time Traveller. The narrator recounts the Traveller’s lecture to his weekly dinner guests that time is simply a fourth dimension, and his demonstration of a tabletop model machine for travelling through it. He reveals that he has built a machine capable of carrying a person, and returns at dinner the following week to recount a remarkable tale, becoming the new narrator:
The Time Traveller tests his device with a journey that takes him to the year 802,701 A.D., where he meets the Eloi, a society of small, elegant, androgynous, and childlike people. They live in small communities within large and futuristic yet slowly deteriorating buildings, doing no work and having a frugivorous diet. His efforts to communicate with them are hampered by their lack of curiosity or discipline, and he speculates that they are a peaceful communist society, the result of humanity conquering nature with technology, and subsequently evolving to adapt to an environment in which strength and intellect are no longer advantageous to survival.
Returning to the site where he arrived, the Time Traveller finds his time machine missing, and eventually works out that it has been dragged by some unknown party into a nearby structure with heavy doors, locked from the inside. Later in the dark, he is approached menacingly by the Morlocks, pale, apelike people who live in darkness underground, where he discovers the machinery and industry that makes the above-ground paradise possible.
Overwhelmed, he returns to his laboratory, at just three hours after he originally left. Interrupting dinner, he relates his adventures to his disbelieving visitors, producing as evidence two strange flowers an Eloi had put in his pocket. The original narrator takes over and relates that he returned to the Time Traveller’s house the next day, finding him in final preparations for another journey. The Traveler promises to return in half an hour, but three years later, the narrator despairs of ever learning what became of him, although just before he left the lab he saw a glimpse of him.
DISCLOSURE: A product sample was provided for review. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed in this post are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255.
i love that book