I grew up on old-time radio theatre. I didn’t listen to it live in the 1940s and ’50s, but my dad got me started on it in the ’70s. Even now, my son and I will listen to old shows like <em>Nero Wolfe</em> and <em>Ellery Queen</em>.
When I was around 10 or 12, my dad would listen to CBS Radio Mystery Theater on a cheap little bedside radio. It was on around 8 or 9:00 at night, and he would lie in his bed and listen. So I would lie down and listen with him. The shows were a little scary sometimes, but not enough to give me nightmares.
Suspense was a similar show that ran on CBS Radio from 1942 through 1962. It was a 30-minute drama and suspense show with episodes written by Lucille Fletcher, John Shaw, Louis Pelletier, and John Dickson Carr (one of the greatest mystery writers of the Golden Age of Mysteries) to name a few.
They not only wrote original scripts, but they adapted other stories into 30-minute radio episodes for the show such as Agatha Christie(The ABC Murders), H.P. Lovecraft (The Dunwich Horror), and Curt Siodmak.
I had a chance to review Suspense: A Live Radio Theatre Event at Breakthrough Theatre Company in Winter Park on Friday night (October 18). The show was originally supposed to play the weekend before, but Hurricane Milton had other plans.
The Shows
Every once in a while, Breakthrough Theatre Company finds itself with some free time in its schedule and a chance to fill it with something new. When that happened a few years ago, said Carla Davis, one of the actors in Suspense, Breakthrough’s director Wade Harris pulled together a few scripts from Suspense, and they put on a show with only one rehearsal.
“We only had one rehearsal this time, and that was last night,” Davis told me after the show on Friday night.
The 11 performers put on four different shows — The ABC Murders (by Agatha Christie), Cabin B-13 (John Dickson Carr), Dark Journey (William Spier), and Sorry, Wrong Number (Louise Fletcher).
(Warning: Spoilers lie ahead!)
The ABC Murders
Based on the 1936 novel by Agatha Christie, the story is about a serial killer who murders people in a town where their names start with the same letter. The killer is working his way through the alphabet, starting with Alice Ascher, killed in Andover, followed by Betty Barnard in Bexhill, and Sir Carmichael Clarke in Churston. At the site of each murder, an ABC Rail Guide is left beside the victim
Alexander Bonaparte Cust (Benjamin Mainville) is a stockings salesman in England who travels from in alphabetical order from city to city. He meets Franklin Clarke (Scott Hixson) and tells him about his headaches and fears that he suffers form epilepsy. He has terrible headaches and blanks in his memory.
Soon after his meeting with Clarke, Cust gets a new job selling stockings and is asked to follow the same route. Only, the people he meets with in his travels all end up dead and Cust is worried that he’s the ABC murderer.
Cust confides his fears to Lily Marbury (Kimberly Boyle), the daughter of the landlady where he lives. She doesn’t believe this kind and gentle man could be a killer and she tries to convince him that it must be something else.
Clarke begins to assist Scotland Yard with the investigation because he believes that Cust is the ABC murderer and brings them right to his door. But Cust is able to prove his innocence and point the police at the real killer who folds like a house of cards and confesses not only to the murders, but that he framed Cust in the first place.
And Cust and Lily profess their love for each other and everything is alright in the end!
Cabin B-13
“Cabin B-13” was originally a radio play that appeared on Suspense, but later became a radio series of the same name.
Our story is the tale of a newlywed couple, Ricky and Ann Brewster (Oliver Merrill and Kimberly Boyle), who board the ship S.S. Maurevania for their honeymoon. Ricky suddenly disappears from their cabin, B-13, and no one can tell what has happened to him. When Ann goes in search of him, she finds that not only are their any records of them being onboard, but that B-13 doesn’t even exist.
The ship’s doctor, Dr. Einrich, helps Ann search for her husband, even pleading her case to the ship’s captain and second mate. (The first mate is onboard but sick with a fever.) But it’s looking more and more like Ricky never existed. Is Ann crazy? Is the entire ship gaslighting her?
(I don’t think he’s missing because he’s been sitting behind her the entire time! Turn around, Ann!)
Ricky calls Ann in the middle of the night and urges her to meet him up on the boat deck, the top deck, near the lifeboats. He’ll explain everything, but he’s in danger and she cannot trust anyone. She goes to the meeting location and finds Ricky, but was followed by Dr. Einrich, who points a pistol at them.
Was Dr. Einrich behind this the entire time? As he explains what was going on, his pistol went off, firing three times, apparently missing Ricky completely.
Turns out it was a sound effects miscue, and the three actors continued on, despite Einrich’s, um, premature discharge. He reveals that Ricky isn’t who he says he is — he’s. . . THE FIRST MATE. He married Ann and was going to kill her and steal her $10,000 before returning home to his wife and family in England.
Einrich fires his pistol at the correct time, successfully hitting Ricky, who falls overboard and sinks into the unforgiving sea. (Great job by Merrill on the bubbling sound effects — flipping his lips with his finger; I felt like I was drowning right there with him.)
Dark Journey
Written by Lucille Fletcher and directed by William Spier, “Dark Journey” is the story of Alice (Carla Davis) and Ann (Jennifer Brophy) take a train trip from Denver to New York to see Ann’s boyfriend Clyde. When they arrive, Clyde (Scott Hixson) does not meet them and leaves a message that he has a previous engagement.
Ann becomes more and more agitated as she waits for Clyde to call, which he does not. She decides she is going her willpower to make him call her and make him love her again. Clyde calls and says that he engaged to someone else.
Ann is understandably heartbroken, but she realizes her willpower trick didn’t work because she was too far away from Clyde. So she forces Alice to go with her to Clyde’s house and she continues to unravel, deciding that Clyde’s overbearing mother is the one responsible for taking him away.
Alice finally talks her into leaving and they return to the hotel. The police call when they return and inform them that Clyde’s mother has been murdered. Soon after, Clyde calls, says he has broken off his engagement, and he and Ann agree to marry once again.
Alice returns to the microphone and tells us she has not talked to Ann in the last 15 years, so upset by who Ann has become in her obsessive drive to sink her claws into Clyde. But after all this time, she’s finally returning to New York to see Ann one last time.
At her funeral. After Clyde murdered her. Just like he killed his overbearing mother.
(Theatre hijinks: While the performance was going on, Benjamin Mainville was amusing himself and trying to distract Hixson and Brophy with card tricks. I’m sure it was part of the show, but that just made it funnier.)
Sorry, Wrong Number
This story irritated the bejeezus out of me!
Not because of the performers. Or, maybe because of one particular performer, Felicia Melcer.
(First, let me say, this is a praise, not a criticism.)
To me, it’s the sign of a good actor when I dislike an unlikeable character. And Felicia Melcer (Violet in BTC’s 9 to 5) managed to do that.
Sorry, Wrong Number, written in 1943, is the story of Mrs. Elbert Stevenson who is sickly and can’t get out of bed. She’s trying to call her husband’s office and can’t get through. So she dials the operator and says she can’t reach PL4-2295. She asks the operator to connect her, but inadvertently overhears a conversation between a contract killer and his manager. They can’t hear her, but she hears every word of their plot to kill some unnamed woman.
Mrs. Stevenson tries to enlist the help of the operator, the police, and even a hospital to help her try to track down the callers so they can save the unsuspecting victim, but no one is willing to help.
She becomes increasingly distressed to an annoying degree. She dials the operator (who was frustrating in her own right), demands the operator do the impossible, screams at her and calls her an idiot, slams the phone down, only to pick it up and try a different idea.
Of course, that idea is equally undoable, so Mrs. Stevenson gets even more upset and screams at the operator once again. As time goes on, Mrs. Stevenson gets more overwrought and hysterical as she realizes that time is running out for the victim and she’s screaming at everyone she speaks to to help her find her husband, to get the police off their asses, and for somebody to do something.
Of course, we all knew who the victim was going to be, and in the last 10 minutes of the play, I was thinking, “Good God, please just kill her already!”
Not a positive and enlightened thought, I know. But Mrs. Stevenson was just so maddening. When the killer finally reached her apartment, I mumbled, “THANK you!”
So, “well done, you!” to Felicia Melcer for an effective performance. I never wanted a murder victim to die more.
Bottom line for Suspense
This show will only happen once in a while, so if you like old-time radio or you like suspense stories or the Suspense show, then keep an eye on the BTC calendar and order your tickets in advance. I would love to see more Central Florida theaters doing old-time radio scripts or originals. You usually only see it around Christmas with A Christmas Carol or shows in the Next Step Reading Series on the last Mondays of each month at Bynx Orlando.
Cast and crew
- Tom Baldwin
- Kimberly Boyle
- Jennifer Brophy
- Carla Davis
- Lynne Edinger
- Scott Hixson
- Benjamin Mainville
- Felicia Melcer
- Marshall Melcer
- Oliver Merrill
- Larry Stallings
What: Breakthrough Theatre Company’s production of Suspense: A Live Radio Event
Where: Breakthrough Theatre Company, 6900 Aloma Ave., Winter Park
When: October 18 and 19 at 8 pm; October 20 at 3 p.m.
Running time: Two hours (one 10-minute intermission).
Tickets: $15 General Admission, $12 for BTC alumni
Call: 407-920-4034
Online: https://www.breakthroughtheatre.com/event-details/suspense-a-live-radio-event-october-20-3-p-m