Dark Adventure Radio Theatre® - The Whisperer in Darkness

I thought this was a creative way to create an episode under the (global) circumstances - but that's just a little side note, I loved this episode!

There was a really fun sense of *distance* between the characters, that was important to the story. I found this interesting as a sort of modern-day technological horror done by way of old-timey cylinders. There was a strong sense of isolation (oh no) but also that creeping moment of finally meeting someone in real life, but them seeming quite different from how you knew them "at a distance".

Absolutely fantastic stuff.

This is another cool DART episode. The acting is superb and the props are top notch. And I really like how it is narrated.

A fun show that leads to a suspenseful finish

Maybe the most important thing to say about this that other reviewers so far have not remarked upon, is not to make this the first DART episode you listen to. Part of its power, especially as the circumstances under which it was made fade away in people’s memory, comes from its contrast with the “normal” DART presentations. I’d listened to about a dozen other DART productions before this one, and the impact “Whisperer” made in its necessarily different approach was immediate and powerfully impressive, enhancing this retelling to me, even more strikingly than the earlier HPLHS film version of the story. As a reinterpretation of Lovecraft’s tale, it is immersively excellent. Those who recall the 1960s TV show “The Invaders” might be tempted to see parallels in the latter stages of the recording, however! The choice of physical props to accompany the CD version is equally good, and although one, perhaps obvious, option - a news cutting covering the Vermont floods and what they washed out - was “missing”, its replacement with what could pass for genuine news reports and commentaries on the discovery of what became known as the dwarf planet Pluto, was equally suitable. Even without the backdrop of the Covid pandemic, this would have been an exceptional DART episode. With it, it becomes a superb achievement by the HPLHS.

This was my first DART performance to listen through, and I was highly entertained throughout. Very creative usage of sending phonographs between characters to further the plot in an active dialogue manner instead of the typical top-down personal journal approach -- this is far from just a re-reading audiobook! I'm very exited to dive into more performances here.