Classic radio drama returns to Ravine Vineyard

Nick and Nora Charles and their canine companion Asta are returning to St. Davids Monday, April 17. 

Popularized by the 1934 Dashiell Hammett novel The Thin Man, the film of the same name that followed it, and especially the ensuing radio series that began in 1936, the characters will be back at Ravine Vineyard for Radio Noir, an evening of murder, mystery and mayhem.

“I started doing Radio Noir as a concept back in 2012,” producer Barbara Worthy tells The Local. “It actually started long before that, when I was working with (the late director, playwright and actor) Neil Munro at the Shaw Festival. He always used that concept for readings. I borrowed the concept when he came to work with me at the CBC, and I’ve carried it on since then as a bit of an homage to him.”

Worthy then teamed up with Patty Jamieson, veteran actor and writer with the Shaw Festival, to  produce Radio Noir performances through the years. They began working with Lyndesfarne Theatre, presenting their radio dramas at Brock University and the Queen Street Theatre in Niagara Falls, where they did a musical version of It’s A Wonderful Life. Performances were later held at Trius Winery for a couple of years before moving to the barrel room at Ravine, where they performed a version of Orson Welles’ War of the Worlds. 

Monday’s Return of the Thin Man is Worthy’s first Radio Noir production at Ravine’s new event centre. 

“We love doing these ’30s, ’40s and ’50s recreations from the golden age of radio,” Worthy tells The Local. “We try to mix comedy and drama, make it a little over the top, to have people fall into the immediacy and the intimacy of it. People gathered around their radio sets for these dramas and were transported by the mystery and the romance.”

Each one of the Radio Noir performances has gathered together a group of theatre veterans, both actors and technicians, who hold as much love for theatre of the mind as they do for theatre of the kind they are usually involved in at Shaw. Next week’s performance is no exception.

“They love doing it,” Worthy says of her colleagues from the Shaw Festival. “We have these amazing actors, such a great collection of people in town that we have been able to draw upon. We’re very lucky to have this rich, enormous resource of incredibly talented people here.”

“I love the medium of radio,” says Shaw veteran Gabrielle Jones. “It’s so much fun to have people get caught up in the story simply by hearing the words. There are sometimes a few visuals, but it’s pretty much just ourselves out there. From an audience perspective, it’s so much more active to use your imagination."

A bonus for Jones next week is the chance to get to work with her husband, fellow Shaw actor Peter Millard, to portray the Nick and Nora characters. Jamieson is doing double duty as actor and co-producer, and Neil Barclay, also with vast experience at Shaw, rounds out the cast. Alan Teichman handles sound effects as the production’s foley artist, and also doubles as the dog Asta, while Ryan deSouza, Shaw’s associate music director, takes on musical duties.

“There are only four of us,” Jones laughs about the cast, “but we play 29 roles between us. That means a lot of switching around. There’s a character from the Bronx, there’s an Italian, there’s an Irish cop. There’s a dancer at a nightclub as well as a very strict high society woman. All kinds of delicious cameos that get sprinkled in with the main roles.”

Worthy has adapted a script based on the 1936 murder mystery comedy film and radio play After the Thin Man, a sequel to the original movie, 1934’s The Thin Man, both of which starred William Powell and Myrna Loy in the title characters. 

“There’s a recognition factor to the characters and the title,” Jones says. “It’s based on those films and the radio scripts from that time, which were hugely popular. There’s a lovely dollop of suspense and a lot of wit. It’s really well-paced. And the icing on the cake is that people get to see somebody doing sound effects as well.” 

And the two acts, each about 35 minutes long, are interrupted at appropriate times by the actors voicing the very same soap advertisements that radio listeners at the time would have heard. 

“I think people are craving nostalgia these days,” Worthy says. “Maybe after these last three years especially, we are all ready for it again. And our audience loves the genre, and they love seeing familiar faces performing for them.”

Worthy says Monday’s script ticks all the boxes of Radio Noir. 

“Mystery, murder, mayhem,” she lists, “There’s lots of humour, romantic playfulness, chaos, and a femme fatale. It’s wonderful.”

Tickets for the show are $99 and include a 1940s-inspired dinner. Doors open at 6:30 p.m. Tickets can be reserved at ravinevineyard.com/Events/Winery-Events.