The Landmark Radio Theater will present its seventh production, “Cocktail Blues: A Tale of the Jazz Age,” on Sunday, Nov. 3, at 4 p.m. at the Jeanne Rimsky Theater in The Landmark on Main Street.
“Cocktail Blues” is an original production written and directed by Pat Lyons, co-founder of The Landmark Radio Theater.
As a production of the Landmark Radio Theater, the comedy is in the classic style of an old-time radio show. The show is set in Port Washington in 1924, with the Prohibition era in full swing.
Lyons’ fascination with the pre-WWII history of Long Island and a photograph he stumbled upon in the Port Washington Public Library’s history collection inspired the newest Landmark Radio Theater show.
“The photograph shows three police officers standing behind the bar at the Cove Inn, which used to be a small hotel on the corner of Shore Road and Main Street way back when,” Lyons said. “There are barrels of beer and bottles of liquor on the bar and so forth because they are busting a speakeasy. These fellas are standing very proudly in their uniforms, looking at the illegal booze they’ve seized. It’s just so evocative of the time.”
“Cocktail Blues” follows the story of a newly wealthy family that rents a summer place on Long Island’s Gold Coast during a time filled with flappers, jazz music and cocktails. Will trying to make a splash in high society boost their daughter’s chances for romance, or tangle up with bootleggers and land them behind bars?
This is the Landmark Radio Theater’s third production that takes place in Port Washington and its seventh production overall.
About 10 years ago, the Port Washington Play Troupe staged a couple radio-style shows at Long Island University in Old Brookville, Lyons said. He took part in a few and really enjoyed the unique format of the show.
“I’ve always been fascinated by the pre-World War II history of Long Island, and also the entertainment that came out of that period: Hollywood movies, the screwball comedies from the 1930s, and also the dominant entertainment media at the time, which was radio,” Lyons said. “Radio was the way people got [entertainment] in those days, and the theater of the mind, the people filling in all the details of the story as they listened to them, it’s a fascinating and very imaginative way to enjoy entertainment.”
He and co-founder of Landmark Radio Thater Elise May, a performing artist and teacher in Port Washington, came up with the idea of continuing the radio-style shows at the Landmark on Main Street.
After doing adaptations of old movies or familiar stories at the Landmark, they decided to try some original scripts. The radio-style shows are performed with actors on stage with microphones and script in hand, like a staged reading of a play, Lyons said.
“They’re acting in terms of the way they’re reading the dialogue, but they’re not in costume; they’re in a set,” Lyons said. “The concept is, the audience in the theater is the studio audience at a radio station where one of these shows is being produced for broadcast.”
Lyons said the sound effects for the shows are done live on stage, and musical director Jake Handelman plays the piano on stage for the musical aspects of the show as well.
Lyons, May and the associate director Kay Long have assembled a cast of 17 performers, some of whom live in Port Washington or have graduated from Schreiber High School.
The Landmark Radio Theater is made possible by grant support from HEARTS Port Washington and the New York State Council on the Arts, administered by The Hungtington Arts Council Inc.
Tickets for “Cocktail Blues” on Sunday, Nov. 3, are on sale now at https://www.landmarkonmainstreet.org/event/landmark-radio-theater-cocktail-blues/
