Radio on stage
Actors revive Hitchcock trilogy
Actors, like athletes, work in rhythm with one another.
Your line. My line. Cross the stage. Shake, then pour martini. Wait for the phone to ring. Receive a call.
React! To the sound of a gun being fired, followed by the squeal of tires as an unseen vehicle departs in a hurry.
That’s when everything goes smoothly.
What might potentially keep things from going smoothly? How about performing scenes with another character played by yourself, while executing sound effects that push your story forward?
And did we mention doing all that while being married to the show’s director — and going to work in front of an audience every night while you’re 30 weeks pregnant?
That’s the present scenario for Anna Cummer, one of the five cast members of Vintage Hitchcock: A Live Radio Play at the Vertigo Theatre.
Cummer plays an assortment of roles in a show that transforms a trio of early Hitchcock mysteries — The Lodger, Sabotage and The 39 Steps — into a single radio drama performed live, onstage.
More about those later. But how about being a cast member (alongside Christian Goutsis, Grant Linneberg, Katherine Fadum and David Lereaney) in an ensemble show directed by your husband, in a show featuring the work of a British director notorious for psychologically terrorizing his leading ladies?
“We work pretty well together,” says Cummer, who also has a three-year-old daughter named Olive with Hall.
“The first project” — Vintage Hitchcock is their third — “was where we had the most teething difficulties,” she says, “where the stage manager at one point actually had to say, ‘OK, everybody out!’ So we could have our little spat. But then once that happened, it’s been really good.”
What neither disagrees on is the enduring appeal of Alfred Hitchcock.
Over the past couple of years, there have been a pair of films exploring Hitchcock himself.
In a violence-saturated popular culture, Hitch’s suspense thrillers, such as Psycho, The Birds, North by Northwest, Vertigo, Rope and Rear Window retain classic status, five or six decades after most of them were released.
What is it about Hitchcock that is so enduring?
“He was the master of suspense,” says Hall. “A good thriller is kind of timeless and he just did it better than anybody at the time.”
For Cummer, Hitchcock’s genius sprang from possessing a keen sense of what audiences were prepared to accept.
“He always seemed to be on the cutting edge of what audiences wanted to see,” she says. “He was always pushing the boundaries — going back to that (biopic) film, the Anthony Hopkins one, he really had to fight to get Psycho made because the studio was like, no, it’s too much. Audiences aren’t ready for it — and he was like, no, they are!”
Hitchcock also possessed a storyteller’s knack for knowing what to leave out of his suspense stories as much as what to put in.
“The gore and scenes of gruesomeness,” says Cummer. “Of course, you don’t see it (in Hitch’s movies). It’s left up to our imaginations — which sometimes can be even more powerful (than the image itself).”
In a way, Hitchcock had more respect for an audience’s intelligence than contemporary thriller directors, Cummer adds.
“He really trusts in the audience to come on the journeys with him,” she says, “to try to figure out what’s happening and what’s going on.
“And it’s all character driven as well, which, as an actor, is fantastic.”
That power of imagination will be put to full use in Vintage Hitchcock, says Hall, which is as much an homage to old-fashioned radio mysteries as it is to Hitchcock.
He always seemed to be on the cutting edge ANNA CUMMER
“I’m a big fan of radio still,” says Hall. “When I was a kid, at night, before I had a TV in my room like every kid does now, I used to tune through the dial to find — I found the Shadow and all these stations playing the (radio mystery) classics.
“I still love it (today),” he adds. “Now, it’s This American Life and there’s a (podcast) show (I listen to) called Welcome to Night Vale.”
And while you might wonder if this is a show featuring a bunch of static actors standing at mikes reading scripts, you haven’t had the privilege of watching voice actors do their work in the studio.
“In order to create authentic voices, you have to physicalize it,” says Cummer, (who is also the TV voice of Strawberry Shortcake). “It’s just the nature of voice acting, even though audiences don’t get to see that visual aspect, it’s something we can introduce in the theatre — so if somebody is playing an evil character, often you will have to create that physically.”
Throw in the fact the ensemble are the ones who do all the sound effects, says Hall, and a radio drama becomes more like a dance piece than a still life.
“It never stops moving,” he says. “They’re moving from mike to mike, to get to the door, to light the match, to talking into the box to sound like they’re a ways away, and the actors are just constantly in motion.
“There’s a choreography to it.”
And if you’re going to a dance, any husband worth a damn knows you better bring your wife. “It’s fun to work together,” says Hall. “The only challenge (with this one) is child care.”