A scare-free Zone... this Twilight is far too modern

WHEN I moved to Kentucky in 19 0 I became engrossed by repeats of a 1950s TV series, The Twilight Zone, which wove spooky tales of a vaguely scientific fiction.

It had distinctive music which set your nerves a-jangle and told stories which preyed on uncertainty about identity, officialdom, security and memory.

It was framed by butch narration which laid down muscular generalisations about human nature. Watching it alone, I used to become properly spooked.

There is only one short moment in the Almeida’s adaptation of The Twilight Zone which is spooking, and that is a scene of old-fashioned attempted murder. The rest of the show is done as a send-up, mocking the production values and narrative techniques of the TV original.

Perhaps seeing it in a theatre – in the company of so many others – was never going to make it chilling. Without that factor, the story-telling loses its purchase.

It starts with a tale set in an American diner late at night, when a group of delayed bus passengers are told a UFO has landed nearby. They realise they are one person more than they should be. Who is the alien?

A cast of ten – including John Marquez and Neil Haigh, with adaptable Adrianna Bertola playing several children – delivers numerous characters. The evening melds eight classic Twilight tales, complete with a few conjuring tricks and choreographed scene changes.

There is the yarn about the little girl who vanishes into a different world; one about astronauts who question their sanity on their return to Earth, and another, rather touching space-travel tale about two lovers being separated.

These are rooted in their 1950s era. They prey on the fears of a small-town America which was being wrenched into a dangerous world.

Think Doctor Who crossed with Thought For The Day. With his speculation about human behaviour at a time of nuclear attack, Twilight’s creator, Rod Serling, was doing on the small screen what Nevil Shute was doing in his great novels.

Are we now to sneer at the grip those stories took? Richard Jones, who directs this Almeida production, must think so. I preferred the honest melodrama of the TV original.