Sorry, Wrong Number

In the preface, Lucille Fletcher provides readers with an intimate look into her process of writing Sorry, Wrong Number. Her original intention for the play was a challenge to herself: to write something that was best suited for an aural medium, not a visual one. However, she explains that “in the hands of a fine actress like Agnes Moorehead, the script turned out to be more the character study of a woman than a technical experiment” (3). Throughout the play, the tension builds as the woman reveals more about her life a little bit at a time.

Fletcher writes that the version in this volume is the original radio script performed by Moorehead. She elaborates on the telephone as the primary source of conflict for Mrs. Stevenson, and further explains that the success of the “mounting horror” (3) is dependent on what the audience can’t see and/or hear, much more than it depends on what they can see.

The preface also includes suggestions for directors who are interested in producing this script in two different mediums: a radio drama, or a stage play. If the director is to produce the piece as a radio drama, the stage directions, which are included in brackets in the script, should be omitted. If the director is staging Sorry, Wrong Number as a live performance, Fletcher suggests two different approaches. The first reduces the noises from the telephone to just the ringing between calls. Instead of relying on the mechanical soundscape of the telephone to build suspense, this approach is more about the actress’ skill of “making it a dramatic portrait of loneliness and terror surrounded, as it were, and trapped within four walls” (4). The second approach is to simulate the radio program live, which requires producing the play in darkness. This allows the machinery of the phone to be heard as intended, and for the audiences’ imaginations to take over. This last seems to be Fletcher’s preference of the two live options, as she argues that “The murder itself, heard only as chaotic sound over a telephone wire, is more effective, and it seems to me more moving, than when seen in full view on a stage” (4). She concludes the staging suggestions by advising artists to utilize real telephone equipment, if they can acquire it, and to refrain from adding underscoring of any kind to avoid distracting from the drama.