Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

Lost in space | 11 January 2018

Plus: muddle at the Almeida and conceptual tedium at the National

issue 13 January 2018

The Twilight Zone, an American TV show from the early 1960s, reinvented the ghost story for the age of space exploration. Director Richard Jones has collaborated with Anne Washburn to turn several TV episodes into a single play. Eight episodes in all. Way too many. The structure is designed to bamboozle us from the start. Some of the storylines have been broken up and are placed episodically throughout the piece, while others are preserved as units and delivered whole. Even the most keen-eyed viewer gets flummoxed by this mystery. Among the storylines that baffled me were: a cop quizzes some stranded bus passengers to find out which is an alien; a little girl vanishes through a wormhole in space-time; a man is haunted by a lack of sleep; a group of airmen returning from a mission discover that two or three (or perhaps just one) of them have been airbrushed out of newspaper reports.

Comments

Join the debate for just $5 for 3 months

Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for $5.

Already a subscriber? Log in