Radio by Al Smith

Directed by Lucy Poulson & Performed by Rob Madeley

'Radio', a play about memory, love and spaceships. The story parallels a young man's coming of age with the birth and death of the Apollo Space Program, and explores the consequences of our losing sight of the Earth. Read the production flyer on this link or read the eview by Roger Clarke below

A brief review of 'Radio', performed at the Old Joint Stock Theatre, Birmingham city centre

CHARLES Lebanon Fairbanks Jnr. dreamed of space travel, Fireball XL5, and, was buying ingredients for his mother for a Christmas ham the day JFK died. Just some of the minutia of ordinary life to surface in Radio, Al Smith's one man play about relationships, space and, of course radio which he wrote as a one-off project for the Edinburgh fringe in 2006.

That was expected to be the end of it but the play took on a life of its own and went off on its own journey with performances in the USA, Australia and now . . . Birmingham.

New West Midlands company First Light decided on the play as their first venture which was both a brave and a sensible decision. Sensible in the fact it requires just one actor with a set comprising of just one box; brave in that it is just one actor with a box.

The actor, Robert Madeley, asked the director Lucy Poulson to direct him in the play two years ago and finally Radio has been switched on with Madeley at last taking on the challenge of Charlie - and winning.

Centre of the U.S.A.

For an hour he commands the stage to chronicle the life of his family from the settlers who founded Lebanon, Kansas - which a survey in 1898 found to be the centre of the contiguous United States - to his father, a farmer tuned entrepreneurial flag seller and finally of his own brief life woven around events in the USA of the 50's and 60's.

Radio is not so much a play as a long monologue and to hold the stage alone for an hour and keep an audience interested during that time is no mean feat but Madeley not only managed that but never dropped his accent once even when adding the voices of characters such as his father and mother.

What it is all about is up to the listener. There is love in there as well as hurting people and chasing dreams, and we all have dreams. Behind it all Radio has its own say on war, the USA's own bête noire Vietnam.

Madeley gave a compelling performance and if there was a flaw it was in the script where occasional phrases betrayed the author was English rather than American while Gerry Anderson's 1962 TV series Fireball XL5 was never an American radio series - although it did make it to NBC's Saturday morning children's TV in 1963. Picky I know but authenticity relies on such things. For First Light though Radio's dials shone brightly enough for a promising dawn.

review by Mark Healey