Review: Nevermore at the Alamo Drafthouse [Theater]
Jeffrey Combs is Edgar Allan Poe
The premise of the show, which is based on historical accounts of Poe, as well as letters, and his own poems and stories, is that the audience is at a theater in 1848, watching the despondent alcoholic Poe attempt to read his stories and poems for a paying audience. His wife, Virginia, died of tuberculosis the previous year -- we remember her because she and Poe married when she was 13 and he 26, and she was his first cousin. What begins as an evening with a master writer giving energetic interpretations of his own work quickly spirals out of control, as Poe gulps rye whiskey and embarrasses his fiance, the poet Sarah Helen Whitman. Helen, as he calls her, is purportedly sitting in the audience, watching Poe become more intoxicated and increasingly angry, railing against literary rivals like Washington Irving and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
The drama is fascinating, but naturally, both his 1848 audience and the Fantastic Fest-ers of 2010 were expecting to hear some of Poe's famous works. Paoli made wise, if unsurprising choices in “The Tell-Tale Heart” (one of his stories best suited to performative interpretation), “Annabel Lee,” “To Helen,” “The Bells,” “A Dream Within a Dream,” and of course, his best-known poem, “The Raven.” One man shows are admirable as feats of endurance, and Combs' performance is a thrill not only because he commands our attention for 90 minutes without a break, but also because he gives us so many sides of Poe. Poe, the puffed-up artist, giving rousing readings of his own work that at times lean toward self-parody and madness, while other times conveying the true heartbreak and loneliness of the author. Poe, the ranting intellectual, trashing his enemies and the politics of the literary world, which he seems to think have kept him from profiting from his work. But most importantly of all, Poe, the broken man, an orphan who, at 39, still longed for his mother, was nursing a broken heart, and had descended into alcoholism. Poe, a man just a year from death, desperately trying to stay afloat.
The set for the Alamo performances is simple: an Oriental rug, a chair and small table, a wrought-iron reading stand, a few books of Poe's writing, and a candle, whose light opens and closes the show. Combs is perfectly attired, with shaggy black hair, a worn out face, and black mourning dress. Lighting is sufficient, though some changes in lighting that marked transitions in the tone of the show felt a bit contrived for the style of the play. Overall, however, Gordon's directorial choices and Paoli's text aid the work of Jeffrey Combs' fiercely talent. Whether one chooses Nevermore for its subject or because one knows the actor from Re-Animator, Star Trek, or elsewhere, audiences are in for a dark, funny, heartbreaking tale.
