Adam Johnson
Northern News Services
Friday, March 23, 2007

YELLOWKNIFE - In 1938, when Orson Welles sent listeners into a panic with his radio play of War of the Worlds, he illustrated the power not only of radio, but of the imagination of the American public.

While Ron Kent's new play, Mickey Sibbeston, P.I.: The Nahanni Files, shouldn't cause a riot in the streets of Yellowknife, Kent hopes it will transport people back to a simpler time.

"It's a series of radio plays that were written for radio, that have since been adapted for the stage," he said of the production, which opens next Thursday at the Northern Arts and Cultural Centre.

"You're actually participating with the author of the play," he said of the use of a listener's imagination in the radio play format.

"Nothing is more interesting than theatre in your head."

The piece is set in Fort Simpson in the mid 1950s, featuring the aptly-named title character as he deals with the famous murder case of Frank and Willie McLeod, and the missing McLeod mine.

"It's the thing that started the whole mystique of the Nahanni," he said of the unsolved crime, in which the brothers were found decapitated along the river.

The piece will be brought to life by Lunch Pail Theatre director Ken Woodley, who believes he is up to the task.

"We're keeping it as a radio play," he said. "The only thing that will happen is the audience will be a studio audience at the taping of the play."

Occasionally, the scene switches to vignettes from the play, interspersed with commercials, jingles, and other bits of mid-50s radio silliness.

"The audience will go away with the experience of seeing a play but being at a radio play," Woodley said.

Recently, Woodley appeared in Some Assembly Required, a play that made light of family dysfunction at Christmastime. He said this is his second time in the director's role, after a staging of Macbeth in 2003.

Kent, who also has a small part in the play, doesn't seem worried about how his vision will be displayed onstage.

"I find it to be a tremendously humbling experience," he said of watching his plays performed.

"They're just black squiggles on a white page and they turn them into people and stories."

Despite the film noir tone of the piece and its sometimes grisly details, Kent and Woodley both describe the play as a "light comedy."

"Where you find comedy is in the quirkiness of characters," Woodley said.

"The North has quirky characters all through it, and Mickey Sibbeston is no different."

Mickey Sibbeston, P.I.: The Nahanni Files opens 8 p.m. Thursday, March 29 at the Northern Arts and Cultural Centre. The play runs March 29-31, and April 5-7..