In this one act farce, set in a studio in a radio station in the 1940’s, the cast of a popular radio show are held hostage by one of the show’s sponsors, Monty Navoli, who is furious that the show has been cancelled, and who also, unfortunately, appears to be a member of the mob. When it is discovered that the producer of the show, Walter St. Paul, has taken Monty Navoli’s money and spent it himself, Monty threatens to shoot him unless the show goes on air one last time. It all falls hilariously apart as the actors struggle to produce a whole show with only a few pages of script, no sound man and a gun pointed at their heads.
The play was selected as a finalist in Riant Theatre’s 2008 Strawberry One-Act Festival, and placed second in the Little Theatre of Alexandria’s 2009 one-act playwriting competition.
Performance history:
Meadville Community Theatre – 2015
Great River School, MN, USA – 2017
Iver Heath Drama Club, Buckinghamshire, UK – 2018
The Fenn School, MA, USA – 2019
Moruya Red Door Theatre Company Inc, NSW, Australia – 2019
Mississippi School for Mathematics & Science – MS, USA – 2019
Buck’s Rock Camp, CT, USA – 2019
IMCOM G9 Army Entertainment, Bavaria US Army Base – 2019
Salterton Drama Club, Exeter, United Kingdom – 2020
Bow Valley High School, Alberta, Canada – 2020
St Francis de Sales College, SA, Australia – 2020
Pulaski County High School Drama Club, KY – USA – 2021
Diva Las Vegas & Company, NV, USA – 2022
Rightway Club, WI, USA – 2022
Plymouth Congregational Church, KS, USA – 2022
Port Huron Civic Theatre. MI, USA – 2022
Rocky Hill Country Day School, RI, USA – 2023
Sherborne School, Dorset – United Kingdom – 2023
Author: M. Robert Grunwald
Genre: Comedy, farce
Type: One act farce
Length: Fifty minutes 50 min
Suitable for: All ages
Number of actors: Eleven actors and 4 non speaking policemen. 9M 2F as the main characters
Ages of the actors: Various – twenties to seventies, 20s-70s
Level of Difficulty: 6/10 – acting one part in real life and another ‘on the air’
Set: The Los Angeles studio of a radio show, 1940. Six microphones stand at front stage right, a sound effects station is at stage left. The walls are soundproofed appropriately, and an ON-AIR light hangs above a door at the back of the studio. There is a long table at the back.
The author states that the play should be produced unaltered. Read more about playwright M. Robert Grunwald
Read a Sample of the Script
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Copyright 2008 M. Robert Grunwald Off The Wall Plays
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