By SHARON EBERSON
An ominous aura looms over radio island, Quantum Theatre’s production of an eerie new play that seems to be aiming at the heart of spooky season.
A daughter’s visit home to help her ailing mother quickly turns into the proverbial “riddle, wrapped in a mystery,” where among the key “characters” are kinetic structures that allow or obscure vantage points leading “into an enigma, “so to speak.
In its essence, the last play of Karla Boos’ tenure as Quantum’s leader bears a resemblance to Stephen Karam’s Tony-winning The Humans, also a slow-burn one-act show, packed with family drama, a mysterious outside force, and portentous noises. Radio island is directed by Katie Brook, Boos’ successor as of the end of the year.
Brook, who also directed The Cherry Orchard for Quantum, here teams with playwright and frequent collaborator Liza Birkenmeier to reveal an unseen menace as information slowly seeps out through the cracks of emotional baggage, evasive answers, and cryptic narration.
In radio island, Ellen (Siovhan Christensen) plays a cool-under-pressure hostage negotiator, who has come home to her small town after her mother, Paula, suffers a mysterious fall and needs assistance. In a real-life twist, Helena Ruoti was a late-in-the-process replacement as Paula, after the initial actress, Anne J. McEvoy, who suffered a fall at home.
Ellen has previously avoided home visits, her relationship with her mother obviously strained. Now, needed but still on her guard, Ellen accepts an assignment from home: More than 7,000 miles away, a Captain Phillips-like hostage situation has taken place aboard an oil tanker, with its 18 crew members and crude oil cargo held hostage for $3 million. Her Contact Man (the voice of Wali Jamal, who also plays the town Sheriff), is, like her, calm under pressure.
Through their phone conversations, hostage-taker and negotiator form an unmistakable bond. Ellen’s unsubtle mother has declared that such a bond is natural, because of her Black, lesbian adopted daughter’s African heritage, and the assumed Somali pirates aboard the ship. Seemingly oblivious, Paula has no qualms about displaying her prejudices.
Ellen, of course, bristles at this, but moves on, perhaps accustomed to such biting disregard about her race and sexual orientation. Her girlfriend Rory (Melinda Nanovsky), not so much. The gregarious Rory has entered the uncomfortable scene at Ellen’s invitation, but she, too, begins to feel the heaviness of whatever is happening in the secluded house and surrounding woods, which like, almost everything else in Chelsea Warren’s inventive set design, are as movable as Birnam Wood.
The lone stationary set piece in the Rockwell Park staging area is an office perch, where the unflappable 911 operator / narrator (Treasure Treasure) oversees the action. Treasure interjects points of time and nature into the roiling mix, casually relating the gruesome death of a snake, the plucking of a doomed snail, and the calls into 911.
One such call brings out the Sheriff. Neighbors have seen an old car swinging by Paula’s neck of the woods, and heard gunshots. It may just be the kind of thing that happens “in the heres and theres,” as the Sheriff likes to say, but it may be something else.
Interjecting lighter moments into the strange scenario is the twangy voice of Brett Kennedy, as the Oil Man who hires Ellen to save his oil shipment, no matter the cost. His callousness toward his crew inspires Ellen’s disdain, and he throws a wrench into her negotiations with Jamal’s Contact Man. Kennedy also plays a jovial visiting clergyman, with ties to Paula and Ellen’s past.
In small town America, everyone knows everyone else’s business. Or they try to, if only the walls would talk.
On the homefront, mysteries abound. Rory spots a man in the woods, and he hustles away. Two bullet holes are found in Paula’s bedroom, and she brushes them off. It is revealed that Ellen’s first career choice, as a child, was to be a 911 operator. And what did happen in that house, with Ellen’s father, that made Ellen want to leave for a military career and never look back?
The only character who seems to have no mystery behind their motivations is Rory. She is rightly terrified by the goings-on, and upset that Ellen seems not only emotionless, but willing to brush aside obvious danger.
Ellen, the expert negotiator, determined to keep it together when all else around her is on edge, slowly pieces together what is happening in and around her childhood home, However, and this gave me pause, she is willing to let her mother off the hook on explanations. When the truth is revealed, instead of following her instincts, she allows her mother the chance to offer alternatives — to negotiate how best to deal with the situation — rather than following her own instincts.
Seated to the left of the staging area, I could mostly see the faces of the interacting performers — the clash of Christensen’s stoic calm against Ruoti’s chaotic personality, for instance — but not always. Your experience of radio island may depend on where you choose to sit. My experience was paying a good deal of attention to the structural moving pieces, perhaps at the expense of pondering what was happening in the heres and theres.
Not as satisfying as the lead-up, the haunting conclusion of radio island ties up most loose ends. I am left to ponder several heres and theres that, perhaps purposely, did not seep through the cracks.
TICKETS AND DETAILS
Quantum Theatre’s premiere production of radio island is 8 p.m. Tuesday-Sunday, October 23-November 15, 2026, is indoors at Rockwell Park, 7514 Thomas Blvd., North Point Breeze. The preshow Q Behind the Curtain, on Saturday, October 24, offers a glimpse into why this space was chosen. Tickets: https://www.quantumtheatre.com/radio-island/ Note: Before the start of the Thursday night show, Mayor Corey O’Connor presented Karla Boos with a proclamation honoring her more than three decades as founder and Artistic Director of Quantum Theatre.
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