Review: THE CIVIL TWILIGHT at Broadwater Studio Theatre

To the annals of arresting “never meet your heroes” stories, we can add Shem Bitterman’s THE CIVIL TWILIGHT, a play which could also fall into the category of cautionary “never meet your fans” tales. This deceptively dark world premiere, co-produced by People with Plays Productions and the Road Theatre Company at the Broadwater Studio Theatre, is not one for those looking to 2025 with visions of sunny skies ahead. Nonetheless, with its deft perspective on the nature of fame, its vaguely claustrophobic setting and a pair of excellent performances by Taylor Gilbert and Andrew Elvis Miller, THE CIVIL TWILIGHT more than justifies its 90 minutes. Ann Hearn Tobolowsky’s production has been extended several times. The performance space is small, and tickets for the remainer of the run figure to be difficult to secure. Get them.

To movie-goers and readers of a certain age, any story featuring an ordinary person and self-described “biggest fan” getting an audience with their celebrity crush will evoke comparisons to Stephen King’s MISERY and especially its 1990 film adaptation. So it goes that in TWILIGHT, a housewife, sometimes fitness instructor and general nobody named Ann Carlson (played by Gilbert) ends up with popular syndicated radio talk show host John Pine (Miller) in a fleabaggy motel room at a moment when Pine is at his most vulnerable. A storm has marooned this unlikely pair together. They can’t leave; they don’t have a ton of resources, and a power imbalance between the two people gives the action its engine. Bitterman sets the stage either for horror, for an unlikely romance or for both at once… we’re not immediately sure which. Turns out the pathway out of that motel is a road through isolation, desperation and a loss – but maybe also a restoration - of hope.

We meet Pine first, via a voice-over message. It’s a murmur of comfort lighting up the darkness, assuring his legions of listeners that – as lonely as it gets out there across the prairie - he is there to listen and to share the journey. Innocence may have long-since gone the way of the dinosaurs, but “through this Godforsaken plague-ridden land of ours, that's the spark that's carried in our connection, my connection to you,” Pine intones, “and your connection to me... across these airwaves.” After the sign-off, his same voice pitches restorative water at $19.95 per month.

Lights up, then, on a cheap Western-themed motel, exquisitely detailed by production designer Joel Daavid with saddles, cheap looking Native American bedspreads and the like.  Entering the space are a plainish woman somewhere north of 50 and a slightly younger man whose relationship to each other isn’t immediately apparent. The man disposes of a dead ferret in the bathroom, and then they can get down to the business of how they got here and where they’re going. Turns out a raging storm has grounded them in the same airport, and for convenience, they shared a cab to the only motel with an available room to wait out the storm. Ann is headed to visit a sick friend. Pine’s destination is more elusive. He hints at meetings in L.A. to discuss the terms of a new reality TV show.

Radio listener that she is, once she learns who her traveling companion is, Ann all but loses her mind at meeting the voice who “helped me three marriages…none were very good.” Pine, rich, privileged and as smooth in the flesh as his on-air persona, knows how to charm his fans. Since he’s going through a few things, Pine can use an authentic connection with someone a few rungs down from him on the life achievement scale. Ann pulls out a baked-from-scratch cake, and Pine shares his stash of single-shot liquor bottles gifted to him from the airline (because he’s famous).

So, sugared and liquored up, these two lonely souls - as Ann puts it – can get acquainted, and discover each other’s weak spots. On both sides, there is much to confess and to forgive. The thrice-divorced and unhappily married mother of one openly fantasizes over the idyllic life that Pine, the “Voice of the Prairie” leads with his wife, two kids and dog. For his part, Pine can envy the realness of Anne’s life. Or at least he can say that he does.

The interplay between Gilbert and Miller is complicated and ambiguous enough that it takes the better part of the play to figure out which character is leading this dance and who is following. Both performers alternate making their characters magnetic and off-putting. Channeling a smugness that stops short of being off-putting, Miller radiates a magnetism that is part folksy Midwesterner, part Hollywood. Even when the man admits to being something of a con man, Ann still finds him easy to excuse. Still, Ann also has vulnerabilities and hidden inner fortitude. Gilbert, the Road Theatre Co. founder, co-artistic director and a frequent performer, inhabits this needy soul with intelligence, compassion and ultimately a backbone of steel.

In THE CIVIL TWILIGHT, Bitterman makes a compelling case for blind faith, for a need for the world (and the people within it) to be a certain way. John Pine is selling this faith to hundreds of thousands of people across the airwaves. Ann is a buyer and, as she assures her idol, “I ain’t the only one.” On a stormy night, the bill comes due, and L.A. theatergoers reap the benefits of watching it all play out.

THE CIVIL TWILIGHT plays through January 26 at 1076 Lillian Way, LA.  

Photo of Taylor Gilbert and Andrew Elvis Miller by Lizzy Kimball

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