Radio Martians invade downtown Vancouver’s Kiggins theater

Esther Short — Martian invaders swarmed the countryside, or at least downtown Vancouver’s Kiggins movie theater, on the night before Halloween. The house was packed for a free, special presentation of the Willamette Radio Workshop’s stage recreation of the infamous “War of the Worlds” radio play as masterminded by Orson Welles and The Mercury Theater on the Air in 1938. Voice actors played numerous parts while sound-effects specialists seasoned it all with panicked crowds, teletype machines, death rays and more; the stentorian throat of director Sam Mowry was the perfect vehicle for a Princeton astronomer’s vain reassurances that those explosions on the surface of Mars are nothing to worry about.