General News

THE ONE-HOUR TWILIGHT ZONE Stage Play Opens in St. Louis This Weekend

By Tom Stockman | May 8, 2014

“I know I had a mental breakdown. I know I had it in an airplane. I know it looks to you as if the same thing is happening again, but it isn’t. I’m sure, it isn’t!”

That gremlin on the wing. William Shatner, the only one who can see it. He’s suffered a breakdown and is on another plane with his pretty wife. She manages to keep him calm for quite a while as he fidgets and twists in his seat. Terrified that the creature is going to bring down the jetliner, Shatner takes a gun from a sleeping policeman! Obviously “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet”, this classic Twilight Zone episode, was made way before TSA regulations that would have required a federal Air Marshal to tackle, subdue, and snap the neck of the on-board troublemaker. This is one of the most famous episodes of “The Zone” and has been parodied several times–most notably on The Simpsons but the Shat doesn’t stand a chance when St. Louis Shakespeare’s The Magic Smoking Monkey Theatre takes it on beginning this weekend. The uber-talented Smoking Monkeys adapt a cult film (or TV show) into an onstage farce once a year. PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE, REEFER MADNESS, GLEN OR GLENDA, THE STAR WARS TRILOGY, THE ABOMINABLE DR. PHIBES, and last year STUPEFY!: THE 90-MINUTE HARRY POTTER have all been the victims of sidesplitting, Pythonesque parody courtesy of The Smoking Monkeys in previous years. This time these lunatic thespians are calling their show ‘The One-Hour Twilight Zone with a Special Appearance by The Superfriends’

The One-Hour Twilight Zone with a Special Appearance by The Superfriends runs 8 performances weekends in May: May 9^th and 10th at 8pm and 10:30pm and May 16^th and 17^th also at 8pm and 10:30pm. The play runs on the stage at the Regional Arts Commission, 6128 Delmar Blvd in University City.

The TZ episode “To Serve Man”, along with the line, “It’s a cookbook!”, have become popular in pop culture and it too will be skewered by the Smoking Monkey gang. A mysterious race of aliens called the Kanamits comes to earth, bringing with them a book titled To Serve Man that promises to solve all the world’s ills. What could go wrong?!? The double meaning of the book’s title could have all kinds of meanings when the Smoking Monkeys are through with it.

Superfriends was a Hanna-Barbera animated Saturday morning show from the early ‘70s. It was based on DC’s Justice League of America and other DC characters. How the Smoking Monkeys are integrating the Superfriends into their show is anyone’s guess but it sure has me curious!

The One-Hour Twilight Zone with a Special Appearance by The Superfriends is Directed by Laura Enstall and features an amazing cast that includes Betsy Bowman, Jaysen Cryer, James Enstall, Ian Thomas Hardin, Jaiymz Hawkins, Scott D. Myers, Maxwell Knocke, Suki Peters, Michael Pierce, Bob Singleton, and Alex Ringhausen

Visit The Magic Smoking Monkey Theatre’s website HERE

http://www.stlshakespeare.org/magicsmokingmonkey.htm