(Above: Dan Pegoda plays Rick Blaine, owner of Café Americain in Casablanca, Morocco, in Radio Redux’s recreation of Casablanca; photo by Scott Kelley)

By Randi Bjornstad

Even if you’ve never seen the movie Casablanca — or heard the radio play version — you probably know something about it, because it contains some of the most memorable and oft-repeated snippets in theater history:

Here’s looking at you, kid.

Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine.

Round up the usual suspects.

We’ll always have Paris.

I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

Undoubtedly, the same recognizable lines will be spoken when Fred Crafts’ Radio Redux performs the story in its radio play format in the Soreng Theater at the Hult Center for the Performing Arts on Feb. 8-10, where it recreates classic radio shows with the audience taking the part of the old-time radio studio audience.

The Radio Redux performance of Casablanca recreates the Lux Radio Theater performance aired in 1944.

The famous lines, of course, originated in the film version, released in 1942 and starring Humphrey Bogart as nightclub owner Rick Blaine and Ingrid Bergman as Ilsa Lund, a former lover he meets again but gives up again to save her and her Czech resistance leader husband, Victor Laszlo, from capture by the Nazis in wartime Morocco.

In the Radio Redux version, veteran actors Dan Pegoda and Nancy Hopps take the parts of Rick and Ilsa, with Peter van de Graaff as Laszlo. Other actors in the show are Achilles Massahos as Capt. Luis Renault, Steve Wehmeier as the German army officer, Major Strasser, who is hunting Laszlo and Lund, and Al Villanueva as Sam, the piano player at Blaine’s Café American. (Incidentally, another of the “classic” lines from the movie, “Play it again, Sam,” is a misquote. In the film, Ilsa Lund really says, “Play it Sam, let me hear ‘As Time Goes By’.”)

Additionally, the Radio Redux Casablanca cast includes Don Aday, Kim Donahey, and Bill Reid, each playing multiple parts. Judy Sinnott and Jonathan Ward are in charge of sound effects, and pre-show and intermission musical interludes will be performed by the Riverside Radio Swing Band with Michael Anderson on guitar and vocals, Randy Roe on keyboard, saxophone, and vocals, Niels Miller on bass and Cam Siegal on drums.

Radio Redux does Casablanca

When: 7:30 p.m. on Friday and Saturday, Feb. 8-9, and 2 p.m. on Sunday, Feb. 10

Where: Soreng Theater, Hult Center for the Performing Arts, One Eugene Center (Seventh and Willamette streets in downtown Eugene)

Details: Illustrated talk about the film and radio versions of Casablanca 45 minutes before each performance by film and broadcast historian Patrick Lucanio, in the Jacobs Community Room on the lower level of the Hult Center; lobby exhibit of historic radio collectibles by Dennis Wright of the Radio Days Theater of the Mind Museum in Sutherlin; meet-and-greet session after each performance with the cast in the Hult Center lobby

Tickets: $22, except $19 for senior citizens, $15 for youths through college, $16 per person for groups of five or more; available the Hult Center box office, 541-682-4000, or online at radioreduxusa.com or hultcenter.org

Information: 541-343-4251