Heading out on a regional tour is The Fitzrovia Radio Hour, which has already achieved a cult following for its re-creation of the radio plays of the 1940s complete with adverts for medical preparations for those feeling "queer and nervy". It's slickly done, recreating the clipped tones and frantic behind-the-scenes activity in a radio studio where the actors also have to provide all the sound effects. Characters die on the airwaves to the sound of a cabbage being chopped and a watermelon being squelched.
It's all quite droll, but it's a one-trick pony and unlike, say, the early Dick Barton spoofs, these pastiches for the radio serials themselves are just not quite witty enough, with repeated emphasis on double entendre. "He was the bravest and gayest of the Gay Hussars," declares a soldier about his fallen colleague. To sustain interest over 85 minutes, this needs more texture and variety, and a greater sense of the real-life dramas of those brought together in a studio to create dramas on the airwaves.
