Edgard Allen Poe is much more than a scary storyteller as “Red-Eye to Havre de Grace,” performed by groups Lucidity Suitcase Intercontinental and Wilhelm Bros. & Co., shows. The play chronicles the last days of Poe’s life, specifically focusing on his journey to New York in pursuit of remarriage, tonight and tomorrow at the Hopkins Center.
The play’s director, Thaddeus Phillips of Lucidity Suitcase Intercontinental, came up with the premise of the piece due to his long interest in the poet, which dates back to his school days.
Phillips’ interest in Poe encompasses Poe’s artistic works and personal life. Although Poe is primarily known as an author of mystery and horror stories, including “The Raven” (1845), Phillips found that there was more to Poe than his popular works.
The play uses the tension in Poe’s life as a writer in a capitalist society thematically, going through his struggle to appease both his artistic desires, which leaned toward the more existential, and the masses, who yearned for less abstract horror stories.
Phillips said that his main goals as a director were portraying these tensions and capturing Poe’s existential themes.
Hop programming director Margaret Lawrence said that the play’s intellectual discussion, which combines the scholarly with the artistic, was one of the reasons she chose this play to be performed.
She said that this play relates to English professor Ivy Schweitzer’s class “American Poetry,” which discusses Poe’s work. Phillips visited the class on Tuesday.
“I think the whole point of his play and his project is that he isn’t just a writer of scary stories, that he wasn’t just always drunk, that he was a very complex human being,” Schweitzer said.
This, she said, is found in his later poems such as “Eureka” (1848), which lean towards existentialist questions.
The play is a form of devised theater, a type of theater in which the cast as a whole writes the script and creates the staging, which Phillips said allows for a more organic dialogue.
The process of creating scenes typically involved a poem, which the cast would use to inspire an improvised scene. From this improvised scene, the cast would refine the dialogue and elements of the improvisation to create the lines for the show itself. As director, Phillips said that he guides where things go.
Sam Van Wetter ’16 attended Phillips’ Wednesday master class at the Hop on devised theater.
“It’s known to be one of the hardest and most time-intensive ways to create theater, and you know, you can work a piece for months and months and it might only be 10 minutes long,” Van Wetter said.
Allowing the viewer to approach Poe from a more sympathetic and perhaps hallucinatory perspective, the show puts the character of Poe in rather absurdist situations, such as a discussion on camping with a duck. These apparent time-wasters, which Poe sometimes perpetuates himself, are in direct conflict with his concrete goal to go to New York and get married, creating a Beckettian feel that thematically matches Poe’s later existentialist work.
However, the play’s often lighthearted tone differs drastically from its subject, often including elements of humor not found in Poe’s work. This is something both Lawrence and Van Wetter are excited to see.
The play’s set also reflects elements of absurdism. With a sparse set, the play often reuses the same items, sometimes repurposing them for unconventional uses. A piano, for example, is at one point used as a hiding place.
The music, written and played by the brother duo of Jeremy and David Wilhelm of Wilhelm Bros. & Co., highlights the absurdist and humorous characteristics found in the play. The two musicians play a piano like a violin, a bassoon and a clarinet. Another piano is prepared and placed upright.
Though the play does not directly address feminist themes, there has been discussion of the role of feminist ideas in Poe’s work and experiences. Phillips visited women, gender and sexuality studies professor Renee Bergland’s writing seminar “Gender and Genius,” which focuses on gender roles.
Schweitzer said that in the past her students have also focused on Poe’s role as a feminist in his short story “Fall of the House of Usher” (1839), arguing that the poem critiques Victorian conventions of women as lesser intellectuals.
Lawrence said that issues of gender may be brought up in the play since Poe writes to his mother-in-law about his existential issues. She commented that Poe had an “intense and lifelong” relationship with his mother-in-law.
“Historically we don’t really know if this relationship was more than that or not, but it’s just an interesting part of his life,” Lawrence said.
She said that this debate about Poe’s views on the role of women and their intellectual capabilities will likely be a part of the audience-guided post-show discussion with the performers.
The show has received accolades from The Boston Globe, The New York Times and Entertainment Weekly, and its performance at Dartmouth will be the first the group has done in over a year.
“Red-Eye to Havre de Grace” will be performed at the Moore Theater tonight and tomorrow at 8 p.m.
Sam Van Wetter ’16 is a member of The Dartmouth Staff.
