Next Stop Willoughby -The Play

The Twilight Zone
Stages Theater Fullerton
Tonight Sat. Night 11 PM
Ends Tonight July 16
Five Scoops of Bosco

By Rick Miranda
For The Daily Bosco

A long time ago I had a guidance counselor ask me, “Where do you want to be right now? Where do you want to go?” After a second I said “Willoughby.” He didn’t get it, the Philistine.

Maybe I’m more of a product of my circumstances than I am of my own design. My Catholic upbringing provides a solid foundation for an acceptance in a world greater than the tangible. Add a Mexican heritage where the paranormal and metaphysical are taken as matter of fact and as real as the sun rising or the rain pouring down. Temper it all a bit with a solid education in the sciences and logical reasoning from Aquinas to Hawking and then throw in a life time of over exposure to television and all its toxins. I find that something like the Twilight Zone isn’t as bizarre or fantastic as I would like it to be. In fact, nothing provides fodder so well for my musings on the unexplained in my life, particularly those rare incidents that completely defy a logical explanation. It has reinforced my interest, no, my affection for the quest for an answer that just isn’t in the right pigeonhole.

I’m not saying that I readily go looking for aliens or things that go bump in the night. I prefer to reasonable and scientific explanation for pretty much whatever I encounter. Yet I resist the notion that the simplest explanation is most likely the correct one, what is inaccurately attributed to Occam’s razor. But at times it’s just easier. It’s too hard to contort my imagination with the form of mental yoga that a Fox Mulder or a Carl Kolchak (remember him) would exercise on a daily basis. But maybe once in a long while an issue, a coincidence or fortunate happenstance or even a misadventure occurs that causes me to fathom the possibility that greater things may be at work.

Human nature usually encourages us to brush these things off with the shake of the head or a hand gesture. Like Ronnie Neary said in “Close Encounters”, “It’s just one of those things.” Afford no more mental energy on said incident and maybe someone will provide you with a palatable explanation at a later date. A mental paperclip to keep those question marks down to a comfortable level. We’re not at ease with the unexplained and especially when it doesn’t fit our personal model of the universe. One of the best things about the Twilight Zone is how the characters react and cope with Rod Serling’s curve ball in their 22 minutes of existence.

The premise is usually the same. Given their environment and circumstance, these are ordinary people. Men or women with which we can somehow identify or at the very least sympathize. The extraordinary nature of their circumstance is only brought to our attention as the story unfolds. A lot of times the protagonist becomes aware of it along with us, further drawing on our sympathies and similarities. Their humanization and the depth of their character is a hallmark of this show. If they are not us they are everyman or everywoman.

Quite often they get beyond their initial disbelief and plunge into the experience with enough reasoning intact to get them through the slight modification reality. The ultimate consequence of their actions is the direct result of either their ability to reason, their moral integrity or their lack of it. Aside from the immediate lesson to these morality plays I think there’s a greater object lesson to be learned. The world changes so quickly that it’s hard to maintain a sense of objectivity about it all. Like a drowning victim in the middle of a river we’re doing our best to keep our heads above water. We don’t have the point of view of the spectator on dry land that can see the sand bank to the left or the impending waterfall a hundred yards down river. The Twilight Zone is an exercise in perspective.

Down through the years these episodes have been played over and over. First in the early sixties, now in syndication and on holiday marathons they have become modern day Aesop fables of at least two or three generations. They have even been modified for radio and the series has been reimagined twice, albeit with limited success. Their repetition provides affection and a familiarity to the point that most of us can synopsize the episode and explain the moral of the story after only a scene or a few lines.

For myself, these stories have become part the collection of vicarious experiences against which I analogize the dilemmas in my own life. Just like any other work of literature, they are on my mental rolodex of possible situations and solutions along with Steinbeck and Solzhenitsyn. Serling, Matheson, Hamner, et al have made their contributions to literature no less significant than modern writers of a so called higher caliber. Their medium was simply television rather than the printed page. The poet expresses their message in a few stanzas; the author can take hundreds of pages. The screen writer has half an hour of air time to do the same. It’s a shame that so many of the great television dramas and anthology series have been forgotten and that the writing for shows like this one, Playhouse 90 or The Philco Television Playhouse are a thing of the past, replaced in this day and age with the vacuous drivel that permeates “reality television”.

But these are dearer to me in some way. Maybe it’s the fact that I was introduced to them first. I was certainly watching the Twilight Zone long before I was reading any of the great literary works of the twentieth century. Actually, it even predates my watching Batman so there has to be some kind of initial influence going on. The original run was during my first five years so knowing my father’s penchant for speculative fiction I’m sure I was exposed to it before I was on solid food.

Now as a local theater company has been so kind as to produce a few of these treasures for a live audience I’m compelled to attend. I have to see at least a couple of these stories on the live stage. Unfortunately my family and friends don’t appreciate these gems the way I do, perhaps from too much viewing on those aforementioned holidays. My wife looks at them and my affection for them much as she would an old girlfriend, she doesn’t really like them but she’ll tolerate me moderately dwelling on them from time to time. I’m going not to critique the quality of the adaption, the lighting, the acting or the scenery. These are stories I grew up with; fond, implanted vignettes; my fairy tales; my briar patch.

So when Gart Williams makes his departure I’ll be there rooting him on. Knowing that really there’s “No Willoughby on the line.” for the rest of us. But in his final moments Mr. Williams has found his “peaceful, restful place, where a man can slow down to a walk and live his life full measure." In Willoughby… and the Twilight Zone.