Get too close for comfort in this Brat Productions play.
by J. Cooper Robb

In its strikingly original production Haunted Poe, Brat Productions gives audiences the opportunity to get up close and personal with one of Philly’s most famous men of letters.

A textbook example of theater as a collaborative art, the show emerges from an original concept by Brat artistic director Michael Alltop, and a storyline provided by Madi Distefano (who also directs) with a huge assist from dramaturg Greg Giovanni and literary consultant 
Edward Pettit.

Alternately whimsical, surreal, frightening and even musical, Poe takes place in a 10,000-square foot warehouse that has been magically transformed into a spooky labyrinth of hallways and chambers.

Traveling in a small group, visitors first encounter a gruesomely amusing puppet show focusing on Poe’s life, including his marriage to his 13-year-old cousin Virginia. The pleasant tone abruptly changes as we move into the “Cellar,” where we encounter the notorious Black Cat Husband (the terrific Bruce Graham). Once a peaceful man, the husband’s drinking (Poe was also prone to alcoholic binges) has caused him to turn cruelly violent. After hanging the family cat from a tree, he murders his wife and buries her corpse behind a cellar wall. Graham portrays the husband’s demented state with eerie effectiveness and the scene’s final image is startling.

The frightening scene in the “Cellar” is a harbinger of the macabre tales and visions that follow. We meet a partying Prince Prospero (Matt Lorenz) from Poe’s The Masque of the Red Death , a cruel ruler who’s ensconced himself in a world of artifice and illusion in a vain attempt to escape a deadly plague. Other highlights include the ghost of Poe (Nate Holt) ranting in a cluttered library, a graveyard operetta performed by a group of rotting female corpses, and a doomed train ride that hurtles towards death’s door.

However, as scary as the chambers and its occupants are, the hallways are the show’s creepiest feature. Even traveling in a small group one feels isolated and vulnerable, and as you tentatively make your way down the narrow, darkened corridors you nervously gulp in anticipation of the horrors that lurk ahead. 

Directed with considerable flair by Distefano, Poe has a punk rock sensibility: raw, visceral and roughly poetic. The actors (who at times are only inches away) perform well in the close quarters (Kim Carson is especially entertaining as the bewitching Morella).

However Poe ’s real stars are scenic designer Brad Helm, lighting designer John Hoey, sound designer Michael Kileyand Alisa Sickora Kleckner, who is responsible for designing the show’s costumes, masks, puppets, wigs and extraordinary make-up. Together they’ve created a marvelously detailed world that brings Poe’s stories to life in terrifying splendor. ■

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