Now playing at Centerstage, The Completely Fiction-Utterly True-Final Strange Tale of Edgar Allan Poe, a two hours and fifteen minutes long extravaganza in which humor turns into morbidity from moment to moment, throws the audience into the mind and madness of Baltimore’s very own renowned poet. It does so by telling the story of his final days in the most unique way possible — through his dreams and nightmares.
Directed by Curt Columbus, the production somehow manages to reach into Poe’s past, as well as into his future — the afterlife — and puts the audience directly in his head, taking them onto a journey with him.
The atmosphere of the theater was perfect, with deep red drapes hanging from every wall and window and chandeliers dangling from the ceiling, draped in shrouds of thin white fabric, which added a ghostly feel to the lighting.
Although fairly simple, all of these things, including the sounds of incomprehensible whispers coming from every direction and shadows roaming behind the various curtains, added to the unexpected eeriness and involved the audience.
The actors portraying doctors and nurses often stood amongst the audience themselves, as opposed to the play existing only upon the stage. At one point, snow fell lightly from above, each snowfall under its own spotlight, looking like rays of sun peeking through dark clouds.
In The Completely Fiction-Utterly True-Final Strange Tale of Edgar Allan Poe, Poe (Bruce Nelson) is essentially running away from the ghost of death, trying to a find a way around this inevitable fate.
In watching him try to flee from death, the audience delves into his life. Along the way, he must face several characters, including his dead mother and his past self.
Although the reality of the play was difficult to grasp, it didn’t matter much, as part of its magic was its delusions and jumps through time.
As indicated by the play’s ironic title, this play took place both as a work of fiction in the poet’s head, as well as in the reality of a hospital, both of which turned out to be equally significant in telling his story.
The moments of truth were made all the more powerful by the way that they were embedded into an otherwise tangled mess of insanity.
The shifts between reality and madness were effective in portraying Poe’s fragile state of mind, one in which he himself was never certain of what was in his head and what was outside of it.
Nelson did a phenomenal job as Poe, as did Charlie Thursten, who played Poe’s younger counter-part.
Both mirrored one another brilliantly, making it truly believable that they were essentially the same character, only in a different time and at a different stage in life. Their very demeanor was identical, along with the passion with which they spoke, even when their opinions differed.
Poe’s confrontations with the past were the most interesting and attention-grabbing scenes in the play: His arguments with his former self — in a way, with his own self — served as introspection for him by allowing him to realize where he had gone wrong and remember people he had hurt.
Poe’s wife, Virginia (Caroline Kaplan), dressed in a haunting way that breathed both nostalgia and regret. As a former beauty that had decayed with the passage of time, Virginia plays a very significant role in Poe’s life and in the show.
The way each Poe interacts with her gives insight into how Poe has grown by the end of his life and how he has not. Emotions are high during this final scene, and the audience clings onto every word uttered on stage. For a play in which the end is known by all from the beginning, the show succeeds in creating suspense that hangs by a thread, just like the fragile-looking chandeliers floating up above.
Valdemar (Libya Pugh) was the only actress who wasn’t up to par. Her manner of walking and talking felt unbefitting to her character, and her French accent was not quite adequate. In a fashion very similar to the film Midnight in Paris, Poe encounters another literary figure — Charles Dickens (Jimmu Kieffer) — during this play and interacts with him in a comical fashion, giving us someone almost equally complex to compare and contrast him with.
“I thought the play was both informative of Poe’s life both in content and its morbid visual aesthetic. The play’s real treat is in its use of special effects to add more than a touch of Gothic sentiment to some of the biggest tragedies in Poe’s life,” sophomore Ian McMurray said.
Overall, The Completely Fiction-Utterly True-Final Strange Tale of Edgar Allan Poe is an extremely mind-bending and haunting experience, but surprisingly not too far from the truth for a work of fiction. Poe’s final days turned out to be incredibly thought provoking for the audience, and Nelson’s acting was absolutely phenomenal, leaving the audience feeling as though they knew Poe personally during his final days.
The curtain doesn’t close once Poe has died. There is still more to see and hear after death has conquered him. There is even more still for the audience to consider and discuss once they’ve left the theater — the significance of leaving behind a legacy in life and the ways in which one can keep themselves alive in the living world even after they have been torn away from it.
The Completely Fiction-Utterly True-Final Strange Tale of Edgar Allan Poe plays through November 25th.
