A MONODRAMA OF SHADOWS
AND SHATTERED SANITY

Stephen Smith’s One Man Poe at the Broadwater Studio comes in two one-hour servings, with each serving offering two of the author’s most macabre and disturbing pieces.

The first part consists of “The Tell-Tale Heart” and “The Pit and the Pendulum.”

The second part comprises “The Black Cat” and “The Raven,” the poem that brought Poe nationwide acclaim.

"The Black Cat"

What stands out most about this quartet is that Smith’s performance allows for no artificiality; he reclaimed Poe’s tales from those over-the-top melodramatic tones we have had imposed on us from excessive exposure to the Roger Corman film versions. Smith has freed Poe’s language, exorcising it from the garishness of American International Pictures’ Technicolor stock, returning Poe’s words to the shadows, and his sparing usage of any denoting hue.

Listening to the tales in Smith’s quartet, one is not conscious of how sparse any reference to color is. Two are almost entirely told in a chiaroscuro of pervading grayness.  “The Tale Tell Heart” has only “the old man’s pale blue eye,” “his vulture eye.” In “The Black Cat,” after the narrator has pulled down the wall which concealed his murdered wife, the cat is revealed sitting upon her decaying corpse “with red extended mouth and solitary eye of fire.”

"The Raven"

Modernity has withered language. Our recorders, amplifiers, enhancers, audio processors, mixing consoles, microphones, digital audio interface, and speakers have polluted and diluted language.

Smith returns to Poe’s words the power they have been deprived of, allowing us to experience the original impact of these tales when first heard.

The achievement is due to Smith’s skill as an actor in constructing each narrator as a fully realized and distinct individual.

The murderous schizophrenic manservant.

The prisoner, struggling to retain his sanity in the face of unspeakable torture.

An inmate desperately trying to chronicle, before the time for his execution arrives,  how his descent into alcoholism transformed him into a mad brutal killer.

The sexagenarian content in his retirement until his mortality is assailed by his remembrance of a long-lost love.

"The Tell-Tale Heart"

Smith’s performance weaves a spider-like web of intimacy with the audience, that draws them into his character’s reality, whether it’s a dank dungeon of the Spanish Inquisition or the dim confines of a gentleman’s library as a storm rages outside.

The music of Joseph Furey supports the mood of each tale, as does Django Holder’s expertly crafted sound design. But it is Smith’s mastery of Poe’s language that brings such an immediacy to the terror of each tale that it feels as if one is squirming through true crime documentaries.

I would love to see Smith take on Poe’s lesser-known tales, such as Hop-Frog, The Oval Portrait which may have inspired Oscar Wilde’s only novel, or Metzengerstein the author’s first published story.

Not only would I buy a ticket to these, I’d drag a few dozen strangers along with me.

"The Pit and the Pendulum"

photos courtesy of the artist

One Man Poe
international tour
reviewed at the Hollywood Fringe Festival on June 17, 2025
for details, visit Hollywood Fringe
plays the Edinburgh Fringe August 1-23, 2025, Greenside @ Riddles Court, Willow Studio
for more about the history of One Man Poe and video clips, visit Three Dumb Theatre
for more tour dates, visit Facebook