Stephen Smith and Threedumb Theatre has been touring adaptations of the work of Edgar Allan Poe for several years now. One Man Poe assembles The Tell-Tale Heart, The Pit and the Pendulum and The Raven.
These well-worn tales are acted out by Smith in a manner fit for chills on a cold night. They are solo stories, with just a quick change of lighting, costume and make-up to keep up momentum.
The Tell-Tale Heart is perhaps Poe’s best known work, filmed and staged many times. In it, a murderer details how his perfect plan to kill unravelled by “the beating of his hideous heart.”
In The Pit and the Pendulum a prisoner is kept parched and terrified between blade and bottomless pit, as his monologue becomes ever more frantic and fearful.
Finally, The Raven is a stylised poem about a lost love and a raven who speaks just one word, “nevermore”, as the narrator progresses from lethargy to madness.
Beautifully staged and filmed, Smith as performer and director mines the horror within Poe’s stories without resisting to parody or flamboyance. An occasional sound effect or bit of set-dressing adds the required ambience.
The three narrators of One Man Poe are each peculiar, but the nervous affability of The Tell-Tale Heart‘s killer evolves to the bluster of The Raven‘s lonesome recluse.
This showcase has quite rightly been causing considerable buzz at fringe festivals, and The Tell-Tale Heart has evolved considerably since Smith’s Facebook Live stream during the 2020 pandemic.
Sometimes this trio of chilling playlets is joined by The Black Cat, but at the Days of the Dead festival in New York I assume time was tight.
I am happily giving this 4 stars.
One Man Poe was part of Frigid New York’s Days of the Dead festival and was presented in both live and streamed versions.
For more on the production and the company’s wider work, go to Threedumb Theatre’s website.