Poe: Master of Macabre Written by John Hardy

A Poe Review

Jacob Yoho

Poe: Master of Macabre, written by John Hardy was produced by the West Liberty University Hilltop Players. I believe this to be a good performance of this play. The Show started as we see Edgar Allen Poe go through the early stages of his life to his adult life. We then cut to one about a man named William Wilson as he slowly goes through his life and descends into madness. The story then goes back to Poe we see him as he is slowly becoming worse and is becoming a mess of a drunk. The play then cut to his short story about a man killing an older man because of the way his eye looks at him. He goes mad and turns himself in. The story then goes to another one of Poes short stories about a man losing his mind inside of a prison cell. The story then goes back to Poe as we see him surrounded by all of his inner demons, and thoughts right before he passes away.

        The design of the production was good was well. The costumes seemed to be realistic as if they came from the time period that the place took place. The stage itself was a small stage with a few chairs, a table, and a couch. They used the small stage to the best of its affects as they were able to make the opening scene of the play very effective. They did this by being able to make the entire theater almost pitch black and having a single spot light on the main character. This applies to the lighting as well. The lighting was well done because many of Poes poems have a very dark tone to them so there was not very much lighting on anything during most of the show. The only time there was light is when the director wanted you to focus on something in particular. During scenes the actors would move the scenery around as it was needed. This impressed me as it proved how much hard work was put into this production. You can also notice that the director had a huge point that he wanted his actors to talk straight to the audience. This is easily noticeable as whenever someone is narrating a story they are not looking at another character. They are usually looking straight into the crowd as if this was just a story and none of it was a surprise to them.  The actor who played William Wilson was Alex Gordon and he was very good. He played the role very well as he had the right emotion for all of his scenes. You could see the fear on his face when his mind began to slowly descended into madness. There was one scene where two actors are mirroring each other and the two actors were Alex Gordon and Alex Franke. This scene I enjoyed because the lip sync that frank was doing with Gordon was almost spot on.