Intimate theatre shows devoted to telling spooky stories are not rare. They tend, however, to concentrate on storytellers like M R James and Charles Dickens—whose tales are acknowledged as classics, or least as originating from ‘respectable’ authors. Edgar Allan Poe, with his dubious death and morbid obsessions with death, premature burial and reanimation of the dead, seems a bit, well, vulgar.
Sole performer and adaptor Stephen Smith appropriately found his interest in horror stories reignited during the dark days of the COVID pandemic. Theatre presentations of the works of James and Dickens often let the literate origins of the material shape the way in which they are staged and become close to stylised readings of the stories. Smith prefers a more, ahem, full-blooded theatrical approach.
It is easy to identify the first story in the double bill One Man Poe as The Tell-Tale Heart. As the audience enters, Smith, bathed in a scarlet spotlight, is kneeling and tearing dementedly at his hair. The protagonist recounts how he was so offended by the unseeing ‘dead’ eye of an old man, he was compelled to commit murder—money had nothing to do with the act. But, although the old man is dead and buried, his heartbeat continues to haunt the protagonist, who becomes convinced others can also hear the sound and so will become aware of his guilt.
Although The Tell-Tale Heart is written as a confession, Smith interprets it as a grotesque boast. The murderer is dark-eyed and twitching with nervous apprehension, but, full of smug self-delusion, claims to be intellectually aloof and visibly preens as he recalls his clever planning of the deed.
Smith (who also directs) does not hesitate to sneak in some effective jump scares. The build up to the murder is staged in candlelight, but full lights blaze as the protagonist leaps towards the audience to commit the crime.
The sound designs in the first half of the show, by Joseph Furey and Django Holder, serve to build atmosphere—eerie, high-pitched noises and, of course, the pulsing heartbeat. In the second half, however, the designs help set the scene for The Pit and the Pendulum. A blast of choral voices establishes the events take place during the Spanish Inquisition. The protagonist this time is a helpless victim condemned to death and forced to endure the cruelties of the Inquisition, including death by either a razor-sharp pendulum or a pit filled with rats.
The second half shifts to a more physical style of performance from Smith, who convinces as someone stumbling in darkness and trying to find their way around a hostile environment, namely a dungeon. The torture device of the victim bound to a rack with a deadly pendulum getting steadily closer is conjured up remarkably effectively by Smith lying stiff as a board on a chair miming being able to move only a single limb.
The gleefully Gothic, even ghoulish staging (rather than a respectful, appreciative tone) is in accordance with the pulpy, gory atmosphere of Edgar Allan Poe’s original stories and makes One Man Poe a fond tribute and a riveting show.