War of the Worlds

Orson Welles and his Mercury Theatre panicked a nation in 1938 with a radio version of H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds. Of the estimated 32 million people who listened to the thirty minute broadcast, nearly a fifth were sufficiently frightened and gullible to take measures to ensure their survival. In the meantime, CBS and the FCC shared the horrors wrought by Orson's Hallowe'en prank.

Both psychologists and actors have praised the adaptation as a study in mass psychology and realistic theatre. A close reading of the script or a few minutes of the low quality LP record, however, will cast doubts on the dramatic worth of the broadcast. Corny lines, private jokes, impossible flashbacks, impossible occurrences, and hackneyed lines mar whatever dramatic value might underlie the plot. Yet the mediocrity and incredibility of the script makes the psychological aspects of the original version all the more interesting.

For some obscure reason, WHRB and Steve Aaron have combined resources and talent to make a tape recording of the broadcast, following the original script. The cast is a combination of WHRB announcers and HDC actors, the latter faring better.

The broadcast begins with a weather announcement, and then shifts to the George Shearing quartet in New York (Welles' used Brazil and Stardust). Then came the now immortal series of special bulletins telling of a strange explosions on Mars, then of odd masses crashing in New Jersey, and finally the war.

The Aaron version relies upon the WHRB announcers to portray the on-the-scene announcers, on the assumption that their voices and techniques could best give the "You are there" sensation. Unfortunately, the announcers sound as if they are describing a football game where Harvard is losing, rather than a war in which humanity is being destroyed.

If the announcers are generally destructive to realism, the background voices are disasterous, The scene where the state militia is being organized, for example, is made ludicrous by an "Hup two three four!" snarling merrily in the background. The dying shrieks as the death ray hums destruction are not very convincing, although amusing.

Aaron's interpretation of the broadcast as having humor is correct, but the script's humor is a very subtle, Wellesian sneer. In the original, the farmer on whose field the first rocket landed was slow and countrived, but in Aaron's he is more of the village idiot.

But there are times when Aaron manages to find and convey the dramatic moments. The reporter describing New York's death by the black gas, James Stinson, has the reserve of an announcer and the sensitivity to horror of the actor. Colgate Salsbury brings a depth and a strength, mingled with pomposity, to the Secretary of the Interior. Eugene Pell does a praiseworthy, although not convincing job as the Princeton professor who watches the Martians with a philosophical eye from the first flourish to the last wriggle.

If the WHRB production is not great, the main fault lies in the choice of script. The War of the Worlds is of great psychological interest, but is at best only amusing drama. But tonight is not Hallowe'en, so a large part of the rationale for the production is gone.