Have you ever felt like the prize catch of the day?

I certainly haven’t. Yet there I was, sandwiched between two small masked fairies, being inspected like they had caught a prize tuna. Aporia (Nikki Gallagher) and Lacuna (Michelle Danyn), pressed in ridiculously close and checking off features on some mad list I couldn’t quite follow. Their words twisting about with logic borrowed from some Arcadian demesne lost to time.

Thus begins Betwixt, an original production from a group of performers operating under the guise of The Wolseley Institute.

The lure was of a solo adventure through a Victorian tinged world of wonders and that, I am pleased to say, is what awaited on the other side of the back door of Zombie Joe’s Underground Theatre in North Hollywood. A good number of the creative team behind the work are veterans of Zombie’s theatre, and while there are some elements in the tool box that are borrowed from the realm of horror, the aim here is slightly to the left.

Betwixt’s palate is more Neil Gaiman than Clive Barker, with a nice thick vein of Shakespeare thrown in for good measure. As I was thrust through a warren of rooms where I was told stories, inspected further, tested by absurd questions, and brought face to face with a renegade spirit even Prospero could not tame I found myself quite happy I had stepped across the first threshold.

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If I’m being vague it’s because I don’t really want to spoil the journey, which surprised me with its inventiveness. This is a prime cut of intimate immersive theatre from some relatively new voices on the scene. Max Zumstein — who is known for some of his theatre reviews — performs, writes, and co-directs with his partner Shannon Garland, who also performs.

What’s most impressive is how many tones — from whimsy to menace, to melancholy — the production is able to pack into a relatively short amount of time. Could they keep it up on a grander scale? Unknown. But it would be an experiment worth indulging.

The production is not without some issues, however.

There are some calibration issues with the intensity of touch in some scenes. These are things I’ve brought up with the creators, who appear very keen to zero in on the right effect. Like others before them, the team is drawing from the palate that has been established in haunts and experiences like those produced by Screenshot Productions in the past. This means that there’s an intensity of force — not violent so much as aggressive, but these terms are highly subjective — which would lead me to not be able to recommend the show to some people I know who have issues being hooded or handled in certain ways.

Which, from my perspective, is a shame, as the world that Zumstein and Garland have created with their very game cast is an alluring one. Mysterious, sexy, dangerous and at points delightfully deranged. A voice that you don’t realize is missing from the spectrum around these parts until you hear it for the first time.

Of all the pieces I’ve seen of late Betwixt reminds me most of Waking La Lorona in terms of scope, cleverness of traversal, and it ability to build a world in short order. An auspicious start for a young company, if indeed The Wolseley Institute becomes a going concern.

While the nature of the work puts it clearly into the frame of an adult audience — if you catch my drift — there’s a potential here for the team to open up their work beyond the ranks of those who are ready to give themselves over to the prodding that happens in the kind of “full contact” show that horror fans have come to expect. The situations and scene work are strong enough that at some point the borrowed techniques are liable to become more of a limitation than a support to these artists.

Whatever path Zumstein and Garland choose, it’s going to be worth seeing where it leads.

Betwixt is playing late Friday and Saturday nights at Zombie Joe’s Underground Theatre in North Hollywood through September 17th. The run is currently sold out. The Wolseley Institute can be followed on Instagram.