Broken Record

Critic's Pick Release Date: 2010-07-21
The Overtime Theater, the Current's Best of San Antonio winner for Local Theater Company, has never been averse to the kinds of risk-taking so integral to good performance. They've also got a knack for the vintage, whether in a production's design or its story (not cutesy plastic vintage, either - more, say, a family-friendly Tom Waits feeling than a Barbie one). The Overtime's combination of the unexpexted with the old-timey has us psyched for The Last Broadcast of Bailey & Long , an original play written by Christie Beckham and directed by Chris Champlin, which depicts the waning fortunes of a post-WWII radio show and the advent of television. Far from being merely a nostalgic postcard, it's a tribute to the working women of that era of broadcasting, as well as a meta radio play-within-a-play in which advertising for products real, extinct, and imagined evokes postwar dreams.