There is no more satisfying way to get your spook on during Halloween season than the award-winning RadioTheatre's annual festival of works by HP Lovecraft, which was held at Kraine Theater in the East Village. Being an audience member at a live performance of a radio play is always thrilling, particularly when it’s done with as much style and panache as RadioTheatre's homage to the famous horror writer.

Each performance in the festival presented two to three of Lovecraft’s short stories, creatively imagined on stage by this talented company with the same actors portraying the different characters. The adept cast of Frank Zilinyi, R. Patrick Alberty, Melissa Roth, Jonathan West, Annemarie Hagenaars, Alejandro L. Cardozo are a pleasure to hear, watch, and absorb. The radio play medium of the show proved no hindrance to any of them from embodying their characters with intense physical and facial expressions that had me absolutely transfixed.

Often in Lovecraft's works the protagonist is not in control of his own actions, or finds it impossible to change course, and this was clearly deeply understood by each highly capable performer, with particular fiendish delight. Lovecraft’s expertise in being able to build tension without bringing the story to a premature end was expertly carried out by the players, too, and left the audience breathless and yet almost sadistically craving more, as though their thirst for fear could never be fully quenched. Lighting, music, and sound are designed by writer/director Dan Bianchi, with sound engineering by Wes Shippee.

While RadioTheatre's productions have tended toward the macabre, I'd love to see what they could do with classic drama/murder-mystery radio plays in the future, too. I am sure their thousands of followers would willingly fill their seats just as they have thus far. First, though, we can look forward to their upcoming Ghosts of Christmas Past, scheduled to run at the Theater at St. John's in December.