War of the Worlds at HITW

Just in time for Halloween, the Hole in the Wall Theater will present the space invasion classic, The War of the Worlds.

But the performance is actually inspired by the renowned October 30, 1938 radio show by Orson Welles and his Mercury Theater on the Air program.

In that performance, Welles’ Mercury show attempted to put a modern touch on the H.G. Welles space invasion novel The War of the Worlds by presenting a radio play with a long segment set as if it were a live news broadcast about an actual space invasion occurring in real time.

But, as the Smithsonian magazine wrote,

Some listeners mistook those bulletins for the real thing, and their anxious phone calls to police, newspaper offices, and radio stations convinced many journalists that the show had caused nationwide hysteria. By the next morning, the 23-year-old Welles’s face and name were on the front pages of newspapers coast-to-coast, along with headlines about the mass panic his CBS broadcast had allegedly inspired.

While some more recent analysis casts doubt on the alleged widespread panic, the impact of the 1938 radio show made it into an iconic event.

The Hole in the Wall Theater says, “For its 80th anniversary, we will be holding our very own radio-broadcast of alien invaders in front of a live audience in order to capture the spirit of old-time radio and Halloween frights.”

The show will be for one weekend only, with a special performance on October 30th, the eightieth anniversary of the Welles broadcast.

Performances will be,

• Friday, October 26th at 8:00pm
• Saturday, October 27th at 8:00pm
• Sunday, October 28th at 2:00pm
• Tuesday, October 30th at 8:00pm

General admission is $15. Tickets for seniors and students with a valid student ID are $10.

Tickets are available at the Theater’s tickets website, or, the Theater says, “you can call our Reservation Line (to pay at the door)  at 860-229-3049 and leave your name, the show for which you want to make reservations, the number of reservations you would like, and your phone number in case we need to contact you.”

The Hole in the Wall Theater is located at 116 Main Street.