(Above: Fred Crafts is founder and artistic director of Radio Redux, an acting troupe that re-enacts old radio plays.)

By Randi Bjornstad

Nearly everyone of a certain age probably has heard the lead-in to the old radio show called “The Shadow,” which always began with the ominous lines, “Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? … The Shadow knows …”

But when Radio Redux does its last show of the season on April 13-15, everyone will have a chance to find out, because an episode of “The Shadow” is one of the old radio shows that will be performed, along with “My Client Curley,” a silly story about a theatrical agent who a caterpillar that dances and turns the creature into an international sensation.

Radio Redux founder Fred Crafts considers “The Shadow” one of the greatest radio mystery shows of all time. It started in 1930, with a character called The Shadow narrating a show called Detective Story House. By 1937, The Shadow had become a full-fledged crime-fighting character instead of the narrator, with “the power to cloud men’s minds so they cannot see him.”

Orson Welles was the first actor to portray The Shadow, which remained on the air until 1954. The episode to be re-enacted by Radio Redux dates to 1938. It’s called “The Blind Beggar Dies,” with The Shadow confronting extortionists who prey upon street people.

“The Shadow” became a phenomenon far beyond radio, also being portrayed in a magazine series as well as comic books, comic strips, on television, in several movies and as video games.

Less well-known, “My Client Curley” started as an unpublished short story by a woman named Lucille Fletcher Herrmann. Adapted for radio in 1940 by an early radio producer, Norman Corwin, four years later it also became the basis of a Cary Grant film, “Once Upon a Time.”

The ensemble cast in this Radio Redux production features Ken Hof as “The Shadow” and Dan Pegoda as the agent in “My Client Curley,” along with Shirley Andress, Bill Barrett, Kim Donahey, Achilles Massahos,  Sandy Silverthorne , and Al Villanueva. Two youth actors, Henry Davis-Piger and Brennan Connelly, also are in the cast as the boys who discover the dancing caterpillar.

The production crew includes sound effects and period songs and commercials by the Jewel Tones trio of Jennifer Sellers, Judy Sinnot and Debie Noel, accompanied by Al Villanueva on piano, Dean Livelybrooks on bass, and Gary Fetter on drums.

Radio Redux

When: 7:30 p.m. on Friday and Saturday, April 13-14; and 2 p.m. on Sunday, April 15

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

Tickets: $19 to $22 for adults, $15 for students with valid ID; service fee added for online purchases

Details: “Explore,” a free illustrated behind-the-show talk by radio and film historian Patrick Lucanio begins 45 minutes before each show in the Jacobs Community Room on the lower level of the Hult Center; lobby exhibition of radio history memorabilia provided by Bob Hart of the Lane County Historical Museum; radio collectibles curated by Dennis Wright of the Radio Days Theater of the Mind in Sutherlin; meet-the-cast session in the Hult Center lobby following each show