When Is a Radio Play Not a Radio Play?

I was at the first rehearsal for It’s A Wonderful Life last night. I have to say I didn’t really enjoy it that much, though the rest of the cast found it to be a hoot. We made our way through about half of the script. The director seemed shocked when we got to the bits where I have to have a conversation with myself and immediately decided to give someone else one of the parts. For a real radio production this wouldn’t have made much difference, so long as the voices were clearly dissimilar in tone etc, and weren’t spoken in the same breath, there would be nothing notable about one person doing dialogue for different characters so close together. However there seems to be more emphasis here on what the audience sees. This is mainly because the end product in this case isn’t designed to be something that you listen to, but something you watch, which is odd in that the script has been written purely as aural entertainment. All that said, it wasn’t a bad experience, I just didn’t find myself loving it. I’m sure I’ll enjoy it more in the next few nights.

I did enjoy working with Charneh though as she comes over with a real 1940s radio starlet quality.

I’m confident that it’ll make for an entertaining production and a fun Christmas night out.