Gather the household around, dim the lights, click here -- then sit back and enjoy the radio theater of Orson Welles.

This week . . . "Julius Caesar", a radio adaptation of Welles's famous modern-dress stage production of the Shakespeare play and the tenth offering of Welles's Mercury Theater On the Air, from 1938.

The stage production dressed the ancient Romans as modern-day European fascists, in an attempt to draw out the parallels between Shakespeare's drama and current events.  The radio production uses a narration from Plutarch read by the famous news commentator H. V. Kaltenborn to invest the broadcast version with a similar sense of timeliness.

This recording is from a rehearsal of the actual broadcast.  You can occasionally hear Welles muttering in the background.
This show will only be on the site for a week, so download it if you can't listen to it right away -- and tune in next week for "The Immortal Sherlock Holmes", the eleventh offering from the Mercury Theater On the Air.

[You can get more information on Welles's radio work and listen to or download many of his broadcasts here -- The Mercury Theater On the Air.  Many more broadcasts can be downloaded at this resource page on Wellesnet.  If you get hooked, you can buy a remarkable collection of almost all of Welles' radio work, as both actor and director, in MP3 format on 7 CDs at OTRCat -- which also offers the discs separately.]