That said, I’m thrilled by the ballsiness of the project, enough so that I’m loath to say anything to slap it down. By contrast, I found that Poe’s grand, romantic struggles in this production rang false. I know too well how tedious and unglamorous the actual act of writing is - a story that accurately reflects that is almost certainly dull, but one that doesn’t feels inauthentic.Īn interesting counter-example may actually be in one of the pieces from This is Where Your Free-time Goes to Die, which details the seventeen-minute debate the writer had with himself over whether the word “trapezoid” or “rhombus” is funnier, and I was in stitches the whole time, because that level of obsession read to me as so true. It may be my own intimacy with the subject (akin to my physician father’s inability to sit through an episode of House). I’ll confess that, for all my love of meta-fiction, I’ve always been dubious of this particular device. The play itself isn’t an adaptation of The Fall of the House of Usher, but rather one of those speculative story-behind-the-story affairs: specifically, of Edgar Allan Poe and the tragic events that inspired him to write. Actually, the audience found themselves laughing inappropriately more than once you feel bad for the performers, but the emotional leaps are so sudden that they can come off as hilariously jarring, rather than effectively startling. Moreover, this is high, torn-bodice, bosom-heaving melodrama, and it takes a very special kind of performer, with a mastery of a very specific kind of stylized performance, to pull that off convincingly - to make the required leaps from heightened emotion to heightened emotion - and the effect often came off as simply shrill. Here, there was a great tension surrounding the dialogue it never felt spontaneous to me, but recited. But there’s an art to delivering those long, winding sentences in such a way that they seem effortless. The writing features some very elaborate, mannered language, which is a huge plus for me. I’m impressed by any and all attempts to do straight-up horror in the carnival that is Fringe. OH, MAN - I WAS PREDISPOSED TO LIKE HOUSE OF USHER. Tags : Edgar Allen Poe Minnesota Fringe Festival storytelling 1
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