Meridian 7-1212

Created alongside The Shadow: The Little Man Who Wasn’t There for The Sonic Society’s Summerstock Playhouse series, Meridian 7-1212 shows how much power is left in the best Old Time Radio scripts. By turns thrilling, heartbreaking, hilarious, melodramatic, and just plain fascinating, Meridian weaves a sophisticated web of characters, relationships, and ideas. The phone lines crisscrossing New York lead us through this tale of near misses, misunderstandings, deceptions, and conversations that never get completed.

A vignette-style show gave us the opportunity for a large, dynamic cast, and I couldn’t be happier with the group we assembled. As is typical of Chatterbox productions, the show was rehearsed and recorded in a continuous take, and it was incredible to feel the mood shift in the room as we moved from each story to the next. Sonically, Eric’s crisp, skillful sound design transports us from place to place with complete clarity. And the extraordinary shadow-box art by Karen Strachan is as intricate, thoughtful, and sadly beautiful as the show itself.

The phone service at the heart of Meridian 7-1212 may be outdated, but the questions raised by writer Iriving Reis remain as pertinent as ever. Chiefly: If advances in technology bring us closer together, then why do we feel so alone?

—Robert Arnold