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‘War’ comes home

By Gersh Kuntzman
The Brooklyn Paper
Q, we presume: John de Lancie, best known to TV audiences as Q on “Star Trek: The Next Generation,” will direct stage versions of “The War of the Worlds” and “The Lost World” on Oct. 26 at Brooklyn Center for the Performing Arts.

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Could there be a better time to stage a remake of “The War of the Worlds”?

Every day it seems, the headlines blare new warnings of the imminent collapse of our world as we know it — quite a parallel to that night in October, 1938 when Orson Welles and company broadcast that the planet was under attack.

Then, as now, the planet reacted with hysterics.

But any resemblance to the events of 1938 and 2008 are purely coincidental, said John de Lancie (pictured), the “Star Trek: The Next Generation” star who will be directing “War of the Worlds” and “The Lost World” on Oct. 26 at the Brooklyn Center for the Performing Arts.

“It wasn’t intentional to stage ‘War of the Worlds’ during the financial meltdown,” de Lancie told GO Brooklyn. “I guess we were just lucky.”

Intentional or not, De Lancie’s take on Welles’s radio play offers a prism on our current crises.

“Most people feel they know ‘War of the Worlds,’ but so few people have actually heard it,” he said. “The subsequent reaction to the fake broadcast so overshadowed the piece that the meaning of Welles’s piece is sometimes lost. But our production lets you see how and why people got so upset by the broadcast.”

Then as now.

“War of the Worlds” and “The Lost World.” 3 pm on Oct. 26 at the Brooklyn Center for the Performing Arts. Visit www.BrooklynCenterOnline.org for info.

©2008 The Brooklyn Paper

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