Horror Helps – written and performed by David Lawson
Watching horror films, with jokes and stories, opening up personally and facing life with humour. That’s what David Lawson’s Horror Helps is about. It’s a personal and quirky look at a particular genre by taking its most popular tropes as jumping off points for the story of the performer.
Anyone who watches horror films will recognise the five reopes appropriated by Lawson. The first being ‘the cops are no help at all’, which could be true across many genres but particularly true in slasher pictures.
The third, ‘child in danger’ and the fifth, ‘New York City’, lead to some quite amusing examples and discussions, but it is the second, ‘involuntary things happen to the human body’, that brings an insight into the performer as he delves into how Tourette’s has impacted his life.
The final trope is that of ‘pandemic’ of whatever type, anything that keeps people stuck in fear and tripidation, of in danger of their lives.
We’re invited to reflect on what the most used line in horror movies might be, and of course, it is “let’s get out of here”, often said at a time when there is either no obvious escape or just before a mass slaughter which could have been avoided had the person concerned not been so dumb in the first place.
Horror afficiados often cite the genre as being one which has a calming and cathartic effect. It’s not my favourite genre unless it is psychological in some way or done with a firm tongue in cheek, but I knew enough to follow Lawson’s tropes and enjoy his stories.
***.5
Poe’s Children – by Permafrost Theatre Collective
A portrait of Edgar Allan Poe, writer and poet, stands on the stage under a spotlight, and spooky music is heard. This is a multidisciplinary look at the words of Poe, a “bold new meditation”. The conceit of this show is that Poe’s imaginary children arrive to honour his memory, which each ‘child’ reflecting on their life through a poem of their ‘father’s”.
It’s a bold piece, spooky and gives a different perspective on a writer who was, perhaps, misunderstood, perhaps, cursed with an addictive personality, perhaps, a genius. His five children each carry the burden of his long shadow and the pride of being genetically linked to it. We listen to the voice of – Poe himself? – as the children listen and reflect. This collective piece ties together movement, words, and emotions.
It’s just over 40 minutes long, short enough to tighten up its resolve without getting too bogged down in semantics. Poe’s Children, held together with a guitar accompaniment, doesn’t have time for us to feel that the notion of any such gathering is absurd. In binding together both Poe’s words and those of the performers, this takes flight as a piece of energetic yet reflective family drama.
The cast are Charlotte Vaughn Raines, Jessica Banegas, Riley McMillan, Mariela Flor Olivo, Mike Newman, The director is Christina Rose Ashby, with music and sound by Thomas Burns Scully, and props and design by Taylor Thomson. As in any funeral, there are eulogies, music, and recitation. There are family squabbles and tension, between the children and between them and their father’s memory.
Poe’s Children was first staged in 2021, and has now been reimagined for for Days of the Dead Festival at Frigid New York. It’s the kind of tribute Poe may well have welcomed, and it also gives a new voice to some of the characters in his writings, the weird and wonderful tales in which he still manages to chill our bones.
***