Piece Comment

Compelling radio


Using an actual historical document as a starting place, this piece becomes a haunting 15-minute radio drama of two men's sudden realization of their own mortality. The piece pays homage at times to golden age masters like Arch Obler and Orson Welles, yet doesn’t take on the now-campy quality that some older radio dramas can have. What listeners do get, though, is a thoughtful, realistic imagining of the way things could have gone had Apollo 11 gone horribly wrong. What we hear is not the grandiose rehearsed pomposity of the "One small step for man" speech but the private thoughts of two men who ask each other "how many people do you think they'll bury up here before they're through? However many it is, it's a drop in the bucket when you consider the entirety of mankind." This is extraordinarily compelling radio, excellently conceived, acted, edited and produced. I cannot wait to hear more from this series.