Before television there was radio and those of us old enough to remember what it felt like nurture memories of nose to the carpet, ear to the speaker as we followed Jet Morgan in Journey into Space or The Argonauts’ Club or the soapier, racier stuff that turned up outside of the ABC.

Canberra Rep’s nod to radio rightly and lovingly showcases the ABC’s own interminable soap, Gwen Meredith’s Blue Hills, but also ventures into science fiction with Flash Gordon and radio versions of surreal British humour with I’m Sorry I’ll Read that Again, At Last the 1948 Show, Monty Python’s Flying Circus, and the one about the kangaroo in the painting of the Last Supper. Even the dapper Hercule Poirot and a convoluted detective story get a guernsey.

You only have to look at the range of audiobooks available from the ABC to know that radio drama in a sense still survives. But the emphasis in this show is on a comic look behind the scenes, an echo of old live-to-air broadcasts where sound effects had to be done live and when performers dressed in their best. This makes for a short but agreeable evening with no interval and a good workout for a range of performers of varying experience.

The convention is that these are a group of actors who have come together to do radio pieces. As in a play like Noises Off, both onstage and backstage are included. When at the end a surprise script is pulled from an envelope there’s a faltering as the characters of some of the actors built up across the evening are dropped and there’s the threat of a nosedive into the wrong kind of theatrical anarchy. The style of the show needs to be maintained right to the end.

However, there’s plenty to be enjoyed. Tony Turner’s urbane Poirot and zany Dr Zarkov, Martin Searles and Ylaria Rogers as the ultimate cardboard hero and heroine Flash Gordon and Dale Arden, Tim Lim as a wonderfully threatening Ming the Merciless and Liz Bradley’s tea-making Mrs Banjo in Blue Hills as well as the odd upstage eyerolling when things go off the rails are all amusing. So are Michael Cooper’s line in earnest narrators and announcers, Kate Tricks’ glamorous and conniving Princess Aura, Ben Russell’s Prince Thun and his exasperation with the pronunciation of his name and Steph Roberts as a truculent actor in a fur stole who is liable to fall asleep, struggle with an effect or miss a cue.

It’s an affectionate if undemanding look at radio that plays into audience curiosity about what goes on and goes wrong (and right) behind the scenes.