Here you will find our Fall or Halloween shows. Many but not all of these are also in the Tomes of Terror series.
Our 2015 Hallowe’en show, Monster in the Mirror, brought together two original adaptations of classic tales of terror on the topic of the horrors we may keep submerged within us—and the dreadful cost when they come out. The show featured “The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll & Miss Hyde” as adapted by Tegan Kehoe and directed by Jess Viator and “The Frankenstein Murders”, adapted by Michael McAfee and directed by Liz Salazar.
There’s one due date you can never escape! In October, 2014, the Post-Meridian Radio Players brought one of America's most respected authors to our stage this Hallowe’en in Tomes of Terror: Nevermore. We adapted three of Edgar Allan Poe’s classic stories, The Masque of the Red Death, The Cask of Amontillado, and The Fall of the House of Usher. And as a little extra treat to set the mood, we started with a dramatic reading of “The Raven”.
In October 2012 we presented three original works in Tomes of Terror: New Arrivals featuring “Shivers on Highway 61” by Alicia Goranson, “The Crasher” by Tim Prasil, and “The Red Line” by Tom Russell.
There’s one due date you can never escape! In October 2008 we presented Tomes of Terror 3, featuring our recreations of a Hallowe’en episode of The Baby Snooks Show and “The Tell-Tale Heart” as adapted for Nightfall and “Reynardine”, an original adaptation of Athan Y. Chilton's short story “The Ballad of Reynardine”.
In October 2006 we presented our first Tomes of Terror anthology, featuring “Gildersleeve's Halloween Party” from Fibber McGee and Molly and “The Maid’s Bell” and “The Monkey’s Paw”, both originally performed on Nightfall.
A nationwide re-telling of the classic American tale
In 2011 PMRP spearheaded a nationwide campaign to spread the joy of terrifying radio drama to all the corners of America!
That Halloween, several radio drama troupes presented live performances of Washington Irving's classic American horror tale, "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow". Each troupe adapted their own version of the story: from its original late 18th century setting to the modern day.
Organizations that have signed on so far include:
Hallowe’en comes alive! Our Hallowe’en show for 2013 featured our original adaptation of the classic horror film “Night of the Living Dead”, which largely inspired the zombie genre, and our version of the Suspense! episode “Ghost Hunt”, about a skeptic’s stay in a haunted house.
In October 2005, we re-created Arch Oboler's lost Lights Out! episode “Chicken Heart” as part of Chicken Hearts and Other Parts, a Hallowe’en-themed fundraiser for local filmmaker Chelsea Spear. In addition to “Chicken Heart”, the performance featured “The Atlantis Affair”, “Erasure”, and Improv PoetryProse by nationally-recognized voice artist Lindsay Ellison, and “The Unhappy Medium”, a segment from Spear’s project The Ballad of Burd Janet, a tretelling of the Celtic folktale Tam Lin.
For our third Big Broadcast, we returned to WPM's studio atop the Putnam-Moore department store for an episode of The Frank Cyrano Byfar Hour, in which Frank and Amelia moved into the Adams family home on Beacon Hill after Amelia's father, Ephraim J. Adams, left it to her in his will. With this move they also inherited the Adams' long-suffering butler, Chelmsford, along with an unusual assortment of neighbors and nuisances. The show was capped by a visit from one of Hollywood's leading ladies—none other than Katharine Hepburn herself! Following the Byfar Hour, in broadcast planned by station manager Howard Comstock to compete with the ever-encroaching threat to radio audiences posed by television, WPM broadcast an original adaptation of Washington Irving's classic tale The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.
These performances were part of a nationwide radio-drama event, Sleepy Hollow: The Ride Across America. We were joined by special musical guest Jaggery.
For our second Big Broadcast, performed in October of 2010 at the Somerville Theatre, PMRP returned to the Rooftop Gardens Auditorium at the famed Putnam-Moore department store for another episode of WPM’s Frank Cyrano Byfar Hour to join Frank Cyrano and the gang for great music and lots of Hallowe’en fun, including a special guest appearance by none other than Hollywood horror legend Boris Karloff!. Then we presented another two chilling Tomes of Terror from the WPM archives: “But Oh, What Happened to Hutchings!” which touches among other subjects upon the finer points of cadaver acquisition, and “The Sirens of War” in which a Navy barge carrying munitions to the Gulf of Mexico encounters mysterious and compelling forces along the Missouri.
