Let’s be honest. When hunting for extraterrestrials, science fiction thrillers, and 1930s radio stars, one does not automatically think to check the Little Theater.

So, as audience members sit down in those squeaky blue theater seats this week to watch Larry Marrs and his Radio All-Stars vs. War of the Worlds, there can really be only one thought on their minds: what in the world is Richard Weingartner thinking?

WHSTE’s latest production combines material from the radio play version of H.G. Well’s famous novel, War of the Worlds, with original material created by cast members and drama teacher Weingartener himself. In a curious twist, it is also being streamed live each night by WayCAM, via livestream.com/waystream.

The production has been billed — and very well advertised — as a sci-fi comedy thriller, and as unlikely as that seems, it delivers. The story told is that of a radio show circa 1930, hosted by Jonathan von Mering as the smooth-talkin’, tune-croonin’ Larry Marrs, which is abruptly interrupted by an extraterrestrial invasion.

Announcer Alan Tyrel (Jesse Vogel) greets the audience, and the entertainment starts right away. Larry and his All-Stars sing “Magic Moments,” complete with a scat riff, and pull us into a time capsule, right back to the ‘30s.

It’s easy to be enchanted. The cast has the pre-WWII radio mood just right, and von Mering’s Larry Marrs has a sound that sweeps the audience off its feet, equally charming in song and speech.

There’s no true lead in the production, but we’re instead presented with a variety of characters who pass the spotlight back and forth. A highlight is the devious seduction of “rising film star” Stella Calloway (Jade Donaldson) who guest stars as Scarlett Merlot in “Moment of Murder,” a mystery radio play with dialogue that seems to be pulled straight out of an old black and white film.

Ryan Meiselman and Cato Crumbley deliver winning performances, too, as Merlot’s foils. He is the bumbling, yet confident private eye Harry Burke as played by Walter Franklin, and she is the wronged woman, Eve Marco, as played by another film star, Beverly Brooks.

Meanwhile, in another radio play, the Teen Angst Ranger (Ari Goldberg) and Bunsen the Science Dog (Nick Hebert) hit gold with their comedic timing and the Ranger’s catchphrase: “Somebody’s angsty!”

The radio plays, scattered episodically throughout the performance, are clever and amusing in their own right, but the real show is in their disintegration. As the alien invasion begins, what started as fluff and cheery entertainment suddenly breaks into pieces.

Of course, this invasion is no E.T. Broadcasters Carla Phillips (Sophie Facher-Yarin) and the mysterious “Announcers” (Amanda Whittaker and Ryan Meiselman) narrate reports of alien capsules landing on Earth and the ensuing attacks in chilling, almost robotic voices.

The brilliance of this production, truly, is in its voices. Not once does an extraterrestrial show up on stage, yet they are very much present. We hear every detail of their arrival, of man’s slow discovery of their abilities, and of the chaos they wreak.

These monsters exist only in the mind’s eye, but undoubtedly, this makes them all the more frightening. Weingartner and his cast have capitalized on an universal truth: We human beings are almost always afraid of what we cannot see and cannot know. The result is profoundly unsettling.

The world of Larry Marrs, with its invaders and its survivors, seems to absorb the Little Theater. The actors are clearly deeply invested in this performance, and they make it all too easy to believe.

Still, it’s obvious from the start that the heart of this play belongs to its director. “I’m at this empty laundromat in Maynard,” he writes in the program insert. “There is something about a wall of spinning underwear that breaches the fantastical. It is here that Larry Marrs oozed out of my brain….”

Where else but in the mind of Richard Weingartner would we find this twisted world of scat riffs and alien heat rays? Who else could engineer this special brand of apocalypse?

It’s to the credit of his cast, however, that for an hour and a half, such a world becomes a reality for the rest us.

Larry Marrs and His Radio All-Stars vs. War of the Worlds will run again on Friday and Saturday night at 7:30. Tickets are $5. The play is also being streamed live online each night, at livestream.com/waystream.