A Curious Volume of Forgotten Lore

Poe – Theatre Above the Law

Theatre Above the Law is celebrating Halloween by re-staging it’s adaptation of several Poe tales, set in a macabre cabaret.

The show consists of Poe’s four most famous stories, Fall of the House of Usher, Masque of the Red Death, The Tell-Tale Heart, and The Raven. In the intimate space, the stories work well, overall. Masque and Tell-Tale Heart were my personal favorite, anchored by strong performances by Ann-Claude Rakotoniaina as the imperious princess presiding over a doomed ball and Austyn Williamson as the tortured tenant to the man with the “vulture eye.”

While the stories themselves largely work and are well performed, I don’t think the framing sequence or comedy gels in the way it should. There’s a fun, sarcastic energy to the set up that should theoretically pair quite well with Poe’s grim tales, but there isn’t enough of an attempt to intertwine them. We largely get either the humor of the cabaret set-up, or a straightforward telling of the Poe tale, and not really the two combined. The effect left me a little distant from stories since I was always waiting for a punchline that may or may not come, and the comedy wasn’t woven in tightly enough to pay that off. The only story that gets any real kind of alteration is the presentation of The Raven. I won’t spoil it here, except to say I wish that kind of work had been cranked up and applied to the other stories.

Still, like I said, the acting is good and the stories themselves are obviously classics. And while the framing device didn’t connect for me the way I would have wanted it to, at its core, the show is still a good staging of some classic horror stories.

Somewhat Recommended

Reviewed by Kevin Curran

Presented October 24 – November 17 at Theatre Above the Law, 1439 W. Jarvis, Chicago.

Tickets can be purchased at www.theatreatl.org.

Additional information about this and other area productions can be found at www.theatreinchicago.com.