The 1940s Radio Hour works as both title and apt descriptor for the current attraction in Northern Kentucky University's annual summer dinner theater series. Word is that the run (through July 30) is already sold out. That's partly because NKU's Strauss Theatre seats only 121, but mainly because director Mike King knows and serves his heavily senior audience.

Walton Jones' nostalgic kickback to a golden age World War II radio broadcast -- complete with such familiar Hit Parade tunes as "Blue Moon," "That Old Black Magic," "I've Got a Gal in Kalamazoo" and "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy" -- is dead-on programming.

It's a snowy night in December 1942, less than an hour until air time for The Mutual Manhattan Variety Cavalcade, featuring the seven-piece Zoot Doubleman (Jamey Strawn) band; singers Johnny Cantone (Rodger Pille), Ann Collier (Pamela Kay Day), B.J. Gibson (Roderick Justice), Ginger Brooks (Hannah Dowdy) and Connie Miller (Sarah Peak); and singer-comedians Neal Tilden (Jim Stump) and Wally Ferguson (Jonathon Pernisek) -- supported by stage manager and sound effects man Lou Cohn (Greg Hillner). The show originates from the beat-up basement studio of 5,000-watt WOV-AM, New York, although producer/director/ host Clifton Feddington (Chuck Haungs) wants listeners to think the music, merriment, frankly sentimental patriotism and period commercials are being beamed out from the glamorous but imaginary Algonquin Room of the Hotel Astor.

Cast and crew gather, gab, rehearse half-heartedly and allegedly reveal their characters' individuality. Many minutes of meandering -- none of it subtle, focused or particularly believable -- fill the first half of Act One. The show only finds its feet when the discipline of the live broadcast kicks in.

There are some nice musical moments -- Pille's "Our Love Is Here to Stay," Justice's "You Go To My Head" and especially Dowdy's "Blues in the Night." There are a couple of amusing commercials and a deadly, please-will-it-ever-end sketch about enunciation from Stump and Haungs, both of whom are more able than they appear in this production.

The 1940s Radio Hour had a brief, 100-performance Broadway run in 1978-79. Grade: B-

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THE 1940S RADIO HOUR, presented at Northern Kentucky University, continues through July 30.