Still flashing back to the scene outside UltraRadio last Thursday night, which I viewed comfortably from one of the 20 audience seats for New Haven Theater Company’s site-specific production of Eric Bogosian’s 1987 play Talk Radio.

The people-watching was going on avidly through both sides of UltraRadio’s large picture window. NHTC had to post a guard outside the venue to keep folks from pounding on the windows Today Show-style during the performance. Ultra Radio founder Randy Borovsky, who’d seen the show from within the studio with the rest of the internet station’s staff during a special dress rehearsal, seemed to enjoy being outside on the streets for subsequent performances, interacting with passersby. On the night I attended, the street folk included a bunch of administrative suits from the Shubert Theater right across the street from Ultra Radio. There was someone playing the role of dapper manager as part of the play. And that, of course, was not where the similarities between Bogosian’s frenetic drama and the real-life denizens of New Haven ended. The play has a clueless stoner, and you could find confused guys like that outside wondering what was going on in the Ultra Radio fishbowl. Lots of professional types and “average” folk too.

I liked the show—I’ve been a Bogosian fan for decades, and NHTC did him proud. But I especially liked the view of New Haven at night. It was as far from the “dangerous city” claptrap as you can get. New Haven’s a city of lively storefronts—the shifting non-profit Project Storefronts, the sidewalk seating outside restaurants—and here was another one, a radio window on the world.