Mercury Theatre on the Air's

HEART OF DARKNESS and LIFE WITH FATHER
Produced, directed, scripted by Orson Welles
Starring Orson Welles,

Two Classic short stories brought to life Orson Welles



Heart of Darkness

Heart of Darkness written by Joseph Conrad has become one of the most widely read works by Conrad. It has provoked controversy for its depiction of Africa and Africans and its perspective on women. Its sources in Conrad s own experiences have been exhaustively studied and its literary antecedents have been relentlessly hunted out.

It has proved a creative stimulus to other artists, inspiring John Powell s composition for piano and orchestra Rhapsodie N gre (1917); T. S. Eliot s The Waste Land (1922) and "The Hollow Men" (1925); Graham Greene s A Burnt Out Case (1961), and V. S. Naipaul s A Bend in the River (1979). Francis Ford Coppola drew on the novella for his Vietnam film Apocalypse Now (1979).

Life with Father By Clarence Day
Clarence Day wrote humorously about his family and life. The stories of his father, Clarence "Clare" Day senior are taken from the New Yorker magazine. They portray a rambunctious, overburdened Wall Street broker who demands that everything from his family should be just so. The more he rails against his staff, his cook, his wife, his horse, salesman, holidays, his children and the inability of the world to live up to his impossible standards, the more comical and lovable he becomes to his own family who love him despite it all. First published in 1936, Day's book is picture of New York middle class family life in the 1890s. The stories are filled with affectionate irony. Day's understated, matter of fact style underlines the comedy in everyday situations

The Mercury Theatre on the Air, a show featuring the acclaimed New York drama company founded by Orson Welles and John Houseman. In its brief run, it featured an impressive array of talents, including Agnes Moorehead, Bernard Herrmann, and George Coulouris. The show is famous for its notorious War of the Worlds broadcast, but the other shows in the series are relatively unknown.

The show first broadcast on CBS and CBC in July 1938. It ran without a sponsor until December of that year, when it was picked up by Campbell s Soup and renamed The Campbell Playhouse.

Approximate play time of 1 hour.

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