The Post-Meridian Radio Players

The Somerville-based PMRP have been performing live radio drama in the Boston area since 2005.

It was founded by Hoosier transplant Neil Marsh, whose interest in old-time radio began when he first heard Bill Cosby's infamous "Chicken Heart" sketch on the Dr. Demento Show way back in the 70s. In fact, the very first performance by the PMRP was of the original Lights Out! episode that inspired Cosby's hilarious routine: a recreation of Arch Oboler's "Chicken Heart". The show was very well received and quickly led to a repeat performance at the Arisia science-fiction convention in January 2006.

The following Halloween, PMRP began its series of Staged-Radio Thrillogies, Tomes of Terror. Hosted by a creepy character known as The Librarian, each show featured three plays: a recreation of an old-time radio comedy and two adaptations of classic horror or fantasy short stories.

The original Tomes of Terror, performed in 2006, featured the 1939 Halloween episode of "Fibber McGee and Molly", plus adaptations of Massachusetts author Edith Wharton's ghostly yarn, "The Lady Maid's Bell", and the classic horror tale "The Monkey's Paw", by W. W. Jacobs. The scripts for both of these stories came from the infamous CBC Radio series, Nightfall.

Arisia, in January 2007, saw the premiere of the sci-fi comedy serial Red Shift: Interplanetary Do-Gooder. An homage/parody (a parodage?) to the Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers serials of the 30s and 40s (with a little bit of the 50s thrown in for good measure), Red Shift tells the story of, well, Red Shift, a Do-Gooder from the House of Truth, Freedom and Peace, and his trusty mechanic and sidekick, Lumpy. Together with two Earthlings from the year 1939—Penny Parker, Girl Reporter, and Dr. Albert Alberts—Red and Lumpy travel the galaxy in their starship, the Recalcitrant, in search of wrongs to right, evil plots to foil, and injustices to unjustify! (Well, that's what the Narrator says, anyway...)

With Halloween 2007 came the second installment of the Tomes of Terror series, which featured the 1949 Halloween episode of "Our Miss Brooks", as well as two more adaptations from the Nightfall series: J. S. LeFanu's early vampire tale "Carmilla" and William Hope Hodgson’s sea-bound ghost tale, "The Stone Ship".

Arisia 2008 brought a new Red Shift adventure, "Havoc Over Holowood", which found the crew of the Recalcitrant trying to save Lumpy's favorite holo-star, Arthur Cogznowski (aka Jetpack Jones: Galactic Troubleshooter), from a horde of rampaging fans who weren't too happy about his latest episode.

October 2008 brought another thrillogy of tales with Tomes of Terror III. The show opened with a recreation of the 1951 Halloween episode of The Baby Snooks Show, an original adaptation of "The Ballad of Reynardine" by director Renée Johnson, and the Nightfall adaptation of Poe's "The Tell-tale Heart".

In their first really big break, the PMRP were invited to perform at The Orpheum in downtown Boston, as part of First Night Boston2009, where they put on a re-envisioned production of the pilot episode of Red Shift entitled "Countdown to Chaos" and reprised their signature play, Chicken Heart. Turn out for the show was tremendous, despite a raging blizzard, with nearly 400 people enjoying the show.

This year, in celebration of their fifth year, the PMRP are bringing their Halloween staged radio show to the Somerville Theatre for four performances, featuring a recreation of the 1938 Halloween episode of the long-lost Boston radio classic, The Frank Cyrano Byfar Hour, and The War of the Worlds: The Fall of Boston, the story of what happened in Boston during the infamous Martian Invasion of 1938. Be sure to join them October 29-31!