After Dusk: The Improvised Twilight Zone
“You walk into a play – but none of the actors know their lines. The play hasn’t been written yet.” While it may sound like the review of an under-rehearsed novice Fringe company, rather it is the introduction to Real Positive Poles who have been running their shows in Bristol for six years and now present two episodes in tribute to “the singular creative vision of Rod Serling.”
The company comprising Luke Cox, Theo Worsley, Rosalind Beeson, Scott Wilson, Isabel Wiltshire and Anna Kemp, After Dusk: The Improvised Twilight Zone is described as “adjacent to but legally distinct from” the science fiction anthology show which originally ran for five seasons from 1959 and has since had numerous revivals, including more than one previous Fringe production.
Each fifty minute performance offering two separate stores, any review can no more than a signpost to possibility as every night will be different; tonight, Mary Aperture seeks the perfect ring with which to propose but is frustrated at the microscopic flaws only she can perceive in every ring available to her; following this, a newly gifted camera takes snapshots from the life of John and Rosa, she blossoming and thriving, growing more impossibly beautiful each day while he decays and withers.
The first segment played more for comedy, it falls somewhat flat other than a few sharp lines (“Of course he’ll say “yes” – look at you, you’ve got so much money!”), lacking the message or lesson which defined The Twilight Zone, summed up by Serling in his traditional closing monologue, here an opportunity stumbled through hesitatingly rather than a strongly delivered insightful summation of the themes.
Leaning more strongly into horror and presenting a developing situation, an escalating oddity of which the characters are aware, Rosey leveraging an advantage which is to John’s detriment but which she finds she cannot give up, becoming addicted to the thrill and the adulation it brings, fortunately the second segment by far the stronger in terms of ideas and structure and with the twist more suitably presented.
It is unavoidable that any improvisation show will have highs and lows, but if this represents them at their best and worst, from adequate to excellent is still a worthwhile average, encompassing the grey areas after dusk, somewhere on the edge of the Twilight Zone.
After Dusk: The Improvised Twilight Zone runs at theSpace on North Bridge until Saturday 20th August
