Mysterious Old Radio Listening Society: Old Time Radio Comedy
Apr 4 | 7:00 pm - 8:30 pm
Live Comedy Radio Play
The Mysterious Old Radio Listening Society interrupts its regularly scheduled chills and thrills for a riotous evening of comedy, both classic and contemporary, performed in the style of an old-time radio broadcast, complete with vintage commercials and live sound effects.
It’s an “entertaining and creepy homage to an era gone by” (Cherry and Spoon), brought to life by veteran Twin Cities performers Shanan Custer, Joshua English Scrimshaw, Tim Uren, and Eric Webster, who “use their voices to paint a picture so vivid that if you close your eyes, you can see the action in your mind’s eye” (Stages of Minnesota).
The Mysterious Old Radio Listening Society performed their first staged old-time radio recreation in 2016 at the Bryant-Lake Bowl Theater in Minneapolis. Since then, they have appeared at the Minnesota Fringe Festival, Daleko Arts in New Prague, The Wabasha Street Caves in Saint Paul, and The Phipps Center for the Arts in Hudson, Wisconsin. Their recreations were also featured monthly from 2017 to 2019 at the James J. Hill Center and from 2020 to 2022 at Park Square Theater in Saint Paul. Currently, the MORLS can be seen bi-monthly at Crooners Supper Club.
“Shanan Custer, Joshua English Scrimshaw, Tim Uren, and Eric Webster have this down cold — not just the technical aspect, but the tone… Chilling as it might be to experience these tales (complete with old-school ads) alone in the dark, it’s much more fun to experience them with a crowd.” -City Pages
“Income Tax Problems” from The Burns and Allen Show (1950): Gracie helps George with his taxes. Chaos ensues. Real-life spouses Eric Webster and Shanan Custer play radio’s legendary comedy couple, George Burns and Gracie Allen, in a classic episode from one of old-time radio’s most beloved series.
“St. George and the Dragonet” from Stan Freberg (1953): A rapid-fire comedy sketch that reimagines St. George the dragon-slayer as Joe Friday from Dragnet, blending medieval legend with deadpan radio noir.
“No One Wants to Take the Last Bullet” from The Minnesota Goodbye (2020): Private Detective Raymond Lake was all too familiar with hard-boiled California killers when he still lived on the West Coast. But now he has a new home and it has a new kind of murder. In the Land of 10,000 homicides, they’ll smile to your face while they stab you in the back. They call it, The Minnesota Goodbye, an original old-time radio series by Tim Uren.