Broad As a Barn Door

Synopsis: Radio sitcom. Mike McNally (Kinsella), is an Irishman who wants to be an actor, but works in a New York sporting goods store. He learns that a famous actor/impresario will open a new play. He is urged to audition and recite Shakespeare to impress the impresario. Mike is hired because his voice sounds exactly like the voice the impresario had in mind for one of the roles, but he is fired at the first rehearsal when Mike proves to be a terrible actor. In between these events, the impresario quotes Macbeth twice, and Hamlet twice, the second time giving a minstrel show reading to ‘Neither a borrower nor a lender be’. Later, Mike wants to practise acting. Though he will not play Romeo, nor is the play to be staged written by Shakespeare, he chooses the balcony scene from Romeo and Juliet. The only person he can find to run the lines with him is a man with a silly voice, who occasionally responds to Shakespeare’s lines as if Mike just said something inappropriate. They also read some funny lines not written by Shakespeare as if they were written by him. The episode title seems to paraphrase ‘wide as a church door’ from Romeo and Juliet III i [With acknowledgement to Michael P. Jensen for providing the description].
Series: Leave It to Mike
Language: English
Country: United States
Medium: Radio
Transmission details: 4 Apr 1946 (Channel: MBS)
Duration: 30 mins

Director

Writer

Cast

Joan Alexander (2)
Walter Kinsella	Mike McNally

Shakespeare, "Broad As a Barn Door". https://learningonscreen.ac.uk/shakespeare/search/index.php/title/av70651 (Accessed 19 Sep 2024)

SHAKESPEARE