Tuesday 9 November 2010

Radio Drama Analysis - The War of the Worlds

The War of the Worlds is an episode of the American radio drama anthology series Mercury Theatre on the Air. It is directed and narrated by Orson Welles, the episode is an adaption of H. G. Wells’s novel “The War of the Worlds”. This episode was first aired on October 30, 1938. Its running time is 60 minutes and its home station is CBS Radio.
H. G. Wells’ original novel relates to the story of an alien invasion of Earth and the end of the 19th century. The first two thirds of the play was a contemporary retelling the events of the novel, presented as news bulletins.


an episode was set out like a radio show, which caused panic for people of America, as they believed that the USA was actually under alien attack. War of the Worlds had a huge impact on the audience of its time, making it still famous today.

Classical music is used in intervals throughout a section of the radio drama, I feel that this is very dated and wouldn't be very successful if produced again today. I thought that the radio drama, as a whole was very serious. Every character was very well spoken. I don't think this would work today as I believe that auduiences need variety in the characters to enable them to relate to them.

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