Review: The Curse of the House of Usher by Weird City Theatre
by Michael Meigs
Weird City Theatre Company specializes in the creepy, the spooky and the haunting. Their sense of "weird" shares something with the scruffy, quirky laid-back attitude of the now clichéd slogan "Keep Austin Weird," in that they are working on a shoestring and a vision. But they are really embracing a different notion of Austin creativity: the idea of translating otherworldly out-of-copyright works into evening séances to give us suspense, a shiver and a release.
Patti Neff-Tiven's set and Philip B. Richard's lighting provide plenty of atmosphere. That's particularly important for a piece in which Poe immediately establishes the crumbling Usher mansion as a character in its own right. In the first paragraph of the short story as he arrives on the scene, the unnamed narrator stops to examine that manse:
What was it—I paused to think—what was it that so unnerved me in the contemplation of the House of Usher? It was a mystery all insoluble. [. . . ] I reined my horse to the precipitous brink of a black and lurid tarn that lay in unruffled lustre by the dwelling, and gazed down—but with a shudder even more thrilling than before—upon the remodeled and inverted images of the gray sedge, and the ghastly tree-stems, and the vacant and eye-like windows.
Poe's language goes on like that through his twenty atmospheric pages, as the narrator seeks to renew the childhood friendship and draw Roderick Usher from black depression and acutely painful reactions to sound and sensation.
In a single early paragraph of Poe's story, the visitor encounters a servant and a valet, neither of whom speaks, and then in a stairwell he runs across the equally silent family physician, whose countenance"wore a mingled expression of low cunning and perplexity." Soon after that Poe gives us one brief glimpse of Usher's silent sister passing by. The narrator later tells us that she died.
The story's climax is a horrific back-from-the-dead-scene, the sudden extinction of the Usher line, and the catastrophic, symbolic collapse of the mansion itself.
WCTC doesn't identify or credit the person or persons who adapted the short story into the hour-long two-act theatrical presentation, so one assumes that this was a collaborative effort orchestrated by company artistic director John Carroll, who plays Roderick Usher, and director Amelia Turner.
A good deal of ingenuity went into expanding Poe's scarcity of incident into a playable script. The company invents a woman household servant, Ashanti, who is equal parts witch-doctor, paramour, housekeeper, hypnotist and conscience. Senait Fessahaye plays the role with strength, presence and sensitivity. Usher's visitor is rendered as Sergeant-Major Perry (Kevin Gouldthorpe), continually baffled and scandalized. Perry distrusts Ashanti; he has great misgivings about the house itself, which gives a threatening audible rumble from time to time; and he is increasingly alarmed as he perceives that Usher's attachment to sister Madeline is unnatural and almost certainly incestuous. Helen Allen is the largely silent, full-bodied but waif-like Madeline of the beseeching eyes.
The two men friends exist without background or shared reminiscences -- how on God's green earth did the aristocrat encounter the young man who rose through the enlisted ranks at an evidently young age to the top non-commissioned rank? Their exchanges consist principally of the sergeant-major urging Usher to leave this awful house and Usher vowing to end his days there.
The piece contains moments of intense drama, which the WCTC cast delivers in good style. In particular, there's a tearing, revelatory moment at the sudden death of Madeline.
The script fails to seize the opportunities presented by Poe's intensely dramatic language. Dialogue is acceptably 19th century but without elaboration -- for example, the sergeant-major does not step forth to deliver to us any of those exquisitely ornate musings in the master text. Instead, at certain moments some of Poe's text is projected on a screen at the back of the stage, then removed too quickly for us to savor it.
Like plenty of other folk, I enjoy the spooky shivers, particularly when a company rouses them not by slashers or by shouting. Keep at it, you Weirds!
Their program card promises a new play this summer: Giants In Their Day by Sean McGrath. Now, is that the same Sean McGrath who helped found the death metal band Impaled, first recorded by Necropolis Records? I have a funny feeling about this. . . .
EXTRA
Click to view program card for Curse of the House of Usher by Weird City Theatre Company
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The Curse of the House of Usher
by Edgar Alan Poe, adapted by John Carroll
Weird City Theatre
