New Jeff Adamson Radio Play to Premiere at Moline’s Black Box Theatre
The theatrical goal to “knock ‘em dead” will take on extra meaning this weekend, as the film noir spoof “The Adventures of Sam Steele” – a new radio play by Jeff Adamson – will take the stage at The Black Box Theatre (1623 5th Ave., Moline) opening Friday, March 27 and running through April 4.
Set in 1947, after the war, Sam Steele, P.I. is on the case with plenty of heavies and femme fatales while he investigates a murder in McClellan Heights, Davenport. Black Box says the show is “filled with tropes of the ‘30s and ‘40s and is just plain fun.”
The cast includes Jeff Adamson, Jess Nicol White, Patrick and Jim Adamson (Jeff’s sons), and Jeremy Mahr, with set and costume design by Lora Adams and lighting by Alexander Richardson.
Jessica White at the Black Box Theatre, Moline.
Jeff Adamson, 72, of Moline, has written two self-published books (“Missing Movie Theaters of the Quad Cities,” 2022, and “Twisted Tales of the Quad Cities,” 2024), and one previous play – “Lights, Camera, Die!” – in the late ‘90s as a fundraiser for Playcrafters held at the former Abbey Hotel in Bettendorf.
In his “Lights, Camera, Die!” Adamson set that play in making a movie, including a restaurant scene and the director ends up dying. Adamson wrote three different endings to choose the murderer, and the audience then got to choose which ending they got to see.
He’s a big fan of history, of British murder mysteries (especially Agatha Christie and Sherlock Holmes), and classic film noir of the ‘30s and ‘40s. The hard-boiled detective Sam Steele (played by his son Patrick Adamson) is an homage to Humphrey Bogart’s Sam Spade (immortalized in the 1941 film “The Maltese Falcon”).
Jeremy Mahr and Patrick Adamson.
Adamson is a former longtime ComedySportz veteran (when it was in downtown Rock Island), and since 2018, has led GIT Improv comedy at the Black Box, which usually does shows there once a month. They also regularly perform at the Bell Tower Theater in Dubuque.
GIT performers (three per show) include the Adamson men, Jeremy Mahr, Jessica White and Dan Sheridan, so the new radio play incorporates many GIT players, as well as some actual improv at the top of the show, before the formal script starts off.
“We’re gonna be up on stage like 15 minutes before showtime in the background, and everything we do is silent,” Jeff said. “It’s like watching your TV with the sound turned off. Even when Lora comes on stage, do her pre-flight speech, we’ll still be back there. When the show starts, the first five minutes, we’re going to improvise it. We have no idea what’s going to happen until the on-air sign comes on. So we’ll be cued from the box going, okay, everybody, pay attention.
Jeremy Mahr and Jessica White.
“We’re going on air here in one minute. So then we do the countdown, okay,” Adamson said. “You know, good evening, ladies and gentlemen. So I’m the announcer along with several other people. And then I’ve got the perfect music.”
Compared to ComedySportz, GIT is more relaxing “because you only have three people to worry about instead of eight or 10 people,” Adamson said, noting there also is a lot of audience interaction. “You kind of control that a little bit more.”
“We used to play an improv game called film noir. And it was always the detective sitting in the office, and then the femme fatale would knock on the door and stuff like that,” he recalled. “I pretty much took all the stuff that we had, and fortunate enough for me, I remember a lot of stuff like my brain works in mysterious ways, and so I’ve taken a lot of the lines that were that came up on the spot going, oh, that’s good. Tuck that away. You might use that some year sometime.”
“There’s some great lines. You know, she had a walk, looked like a bratwurst rolling off a paper plate,” Adamson said. “And it’s like, what? But it’s those ridiculous lines that I threw into this radio play. It’s all that crap that came up off the cuff that’s like, oh, that is so good. You gotta remember that stuff.”
Playwright Jeff Adamson in his radio play, “The Adventures of Sam Steele.”
While Black Box artistic director Lora Adams has directed many radio plays there over the years, Jeff has never been in one, though he’s seen several shows at the 60-seat venue. “And I’ve enjoyed pretty much everything they’ve done at the Black Box,” he said. “The stage is intimate. I just like the small crowd. You’re right there in your face, you know. That’s one of the things I liked about Playcrafters too, with the thrust stage.”
While Adamson has a smooth, booming voice (seemingly made for radio), he only worked at a radio station briefly in his career, in the early ‘70s. That was doing news at a Geneseo station for a couple months, before working as head waiter at the old Boar’s Head Steakhouse (where Miss Mamie’s is today), and then going on to a 30-year-career working for John Deere, mostly at the Product Development Center in Silvis.
Jim Adamson, left, Jeremy Mahr and Jess Nicol White.
While in the play Patrick always is just Sam Steele, the other actors play about 20 characters (without costume changes since it’s radio), and do all the sound effects, like at the Argus newspaper office, or at a diner.
“I always appreciate a writer who can surprise the reader, you know, so that’s what I tried to do, which actually involved my wife,” Adamson said of his spouse, April. “Her writing was amazing.”
Jeff Adamson’s new radio play opens Friday, March 27 at 7:30 p.m. at Black Box Theatre, 1623 5th Ave., Moline.
Old former Tri Cities hot spots pop up in the play, including the Plantation, the Manhattan Club, and Blackhawk Hotel (which of course is still around), and “I even have a gorgeous ranch on the bluff of this little small town called Bettendorf,” Adamson said. “So I’ve tried to tie in everything that has that flavor of that period of time.”
Since it’s radio play, there also will be two commercials, for Ajax foam cleanser, including a musical takeoff on “Mister Sandman.”
The premiere of “The Adventures of Sam Steele” kicks of The Black Box Theatre’s 10th season. Performances are 7:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday (plus April 2, 3 and 4), and 2 p.m.
Sunday, March 29). Tickets are $18 and available at the door or at theblackboxtheatre.com.
“The Adventures of Sam Steele” features (L-R) Jim Adamson, Jeff Adamson, Patrick Adamson, Jessica White and Jeremy Mahr.
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