Fringe Review: ONE MAN POE: THE TELL-TALE HEART & THE PIT & THE PENDULUM, Greenside @ Riddles Court
Photo credit: Alya Sayer Photography
At this year’s Edinburgh Festival Fringe, actor Stephen Smith is performing six (yes, six!) Edgar Allan Poe stories. At each show, two stories are performed verbatim. How Smith has learnt all this material, we will never know but that is a remarkable feat in itself before the show has started.
At the show we went to see, The Tell-Tale Heart, perhaps one of Poe’s more well known stories, was performed alongside The Pit and the Pendulum. In each, Stephen Smith plays a very different character showing his immense range and versatility as an actor.
In The Tell-Tale Heart, Smith plays a man who is probably mad, or at least going mad. He is delightfully sinister in this almost impish role - somewhere between Sweeney Todd and Tobias Ragg, with a splash of Puck thrown in. There is a growing sense of looming danger and we don’t know what this man might do. Smith brings to life the character’s journey from madness to complete breakdown wonderfully.
As we transition from one story to the next, we remain immersed in this gothic world. Smith changes his outside and make-up on stage but stays fully in this world so we do too.
In The Pit and the Pendulum, Smith plays a character completely opposite to the last. In this story, he is almost likeable. He is a man on the edge of death, being tortured by a political regime. Smith demonstrates impeccable control of his body - we genuinely believe he could fall and break every bone in his body at any moment. We are taken on a rollercoaster of emotions in this story as a bit of hope starts to appear and then is ripped away. Smith’s performance of this story is genuinely quite moving.
The power of this piece of theatre is how simply it is staged. Our attention is solely focused on Stephen Smith’s performance of Edgar Allan Poe’s dense words. The performance is only enhanced by Joseph Furey and Django Holder’s sound design, building tension when required and immersing us into the worlds of the stories. The show is also lit beautifully, adding to the immersion.
Stephen Smith in One Man Poe is a must-see at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe - his performance is nothing short of outstanding and we’re sure it must be in the other stories too. At a festival oversaturated with one-person plays, this offers something different - intense and immersive (but don’t worry, it’s not too scary!).
***** Five stars
Reviewed by: Jacob Bush