'Radio Gals' captures fun of early days

IF YOU GO

What: "Radio Gals"When: 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday, Jan. 18-19, and Jan. 24-26; 2 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 20Where: Artistic Civic Theatre, 907 Gaston St., Dalton Ga.Admission: $9-$15Phone: 706-278-4796Website: www.actdalton.org

Hazel C. Hunt is a pioneer and a modern woman.

Not content with retirement after years as the town music teacher, she becomes - with the retirement gift of a 500-watt transmitter - one of the first women in radio when she launches radio station WGAL in 1920s Cedar Ridge, Ark.

Along with homey chat, rejuvenating tonic plugs and calendar items, she daily offers a wacky quartet of musicians who intone rib-tickling songs for the listeners.

"Radio Gals," the musical story of fictional Hazel and her station, opens Friday, Jan. 18, at the Artistic Civic Theatre in Dalton, Ga.

"Radio Gals" is a lively, cheery, nostalgia-dipped musical, keeping the old-fashioned musical numbers, country humor and romance coming fast enough to charm the ear," Lawrence Van Gelder said in The New York Times of a previous production.

Written by Mike Craver and Mark Hardwick, it contains songs with enticing song titles such as "Edna Jones the Elephant Girl," "A Gal's Got To Do What a Gal's Got To Do," "There Are Fairies in My Mother's Flower Garden" and "That Wicky Wacky Hula Hula Honka Wonka Honolulu Hawaiian Honey of Mine."

All the world's a song for a while. But Hazel's habit of wave-jumping to find a clear channel eventually brings a government inspector to shut her down. But when all seems lost, she finds a stage-struck accordion beneath the inspector's bureaucratic facade, and suddenly anything can happen.

"The magic of 'Radio Gals' is in its loving re-creation of America's innocent musical past," says Hoyt Hilsman in Variety. "Hardwick and Craver have brilliantly recaptured the spirit of small-town America in the '20s with a remarkable sense of authenticity. This is a fun, moving tribute to the pure, lighthearted innocence that was once America and may still be lurking somewhere deep in our hearts."

Upcoming Events