The Golden Age of Radio will comes to Whidbey Island this weekend.

A group of island volunteers will perform “Fibber McGee and Molly,” “Sherlock Holmes,” “Our Miss Brooks” and “The Whistler” in two shows to benefit the programming and expansion KWPA Whidbey Public Radio.

Islanders will have a chance to see the historic on-air hits in “Old Time Radio — Live On Stage!” at 3 and 7 p.m. Saturday, June 12 at Fort Casey Auditorium in Coupeville.

Life of Whidbey – and the world – once revolved around the radio.

According to a consensus taken in 1947, about 82 out of 100 Americans were tuned in regularly between 1935 and 1950, and radio characters were the stars of everyone’s imagination.

The performances, which are directed by Elizabeth Herbert and produced by William Bell and Harry Anderson, feature original 1940s radio scripts with costumes, sound effects and a healthy helping of American nostalgia.

Fort Casey Auditorium was once used as a movie theater and a live performance venue for soldiers during World War II, and thus will add to the historical atmosphere created for the old-time show.

Since the early 1930s, network radio presented hundreds of memorable drama and comedy programs that enthralled America through the Depression, World War II and the early post-war period.

From “Fibber McGee and Molly” the island troupe presents the episode, “Cleaning the Hall Closet.” The scene focuses on the hilarious hijinks of a bickering husband and wife as they open the world’s most famous disorganized closet. “Fibber McGee and Molly” ran on network radio for almost 25 years.

Presented from “Sherlock Holmes,” is “The Adventure of the Tolling Bell,” in which the world-famous detective and his sidekick, Dr. Watson, confront a web of mystery and a serial killer in the quiet English countryside.

In “Our Miss Brooks,” everybody’s favorite high school English teacher is caught up in a side-splitting misadventure when cantankerous principal Osgood Conklin mistakenly thinks he’s about to receive a special honor from the school board in an episode of “A Plaque for Mr. Conklin.”

Finally, “The Whistler” segment features “Beyond Reasonable Doubt,” when the mysterious Whistler, who “knows many things … because I walk by night,” spins the strange tale of a former shop girl with a dark secret who murders a blackmailer, and tries to pin it on someone else.

Such edge-of-the-seat theater is highlighted by the live sound effects that adds to the theatricality of the radio-theater experience.

These fun-for-the-whole-family performances will be recorded for a later broadcast on KWPA 96.9, streaming live at www.kwparadio.org.

Tickets for each show are $16, or four for $58 in advance, or $20 at the door.

Get tickets at Moonraker Books in Langley, Book Bay in Freeland, Local Grown on the Coupeville Wharf and Bay Leaf in Coupeville and Oak Harbor.

Tickets can also be purchased online; click here.