Edgar Allan Poe is a name popular as well as literary for the macabre and the eerie, and a production of his famous tale “The Tell-Tale Heart” arrives just in time for Halloween in a fabulously atmospheric production at Arlington’s Synetic Theater.
This dark psychological horror offering from Poe (directed adroitly by Paata Tsikuruishvili) involves a man who confesses to a bizarre murder with an even stranger justification: he lives presumably as a lodger with a kind old man whom he grows to hate due to the old man’s evil eye. As the young man seeks to elicit our sympathy, he proves himself increasingly deranged. In the Synetic performance, two aspects of the tale are linked to Poe’s poetry and life. From Poe’s spooky poem “The Raven,” resident dramaturg and adaptor Nathan Weinberger has added ravens (or perhaps crows or vultures, the narrator says). The production shows the man’s progression from him fighting his inner demons to him becoming one with the ravens or vultures. From Poe’s life, the adaptor has taken Poe’s given name Edgar and attached it to the narrator, interpreting the troubled narrator as linked to the troubled life of Poe himself. Alex Mills is excellent as Edgar and Irakli Kavsadze is wonderful as the Old Man. In praising their performances, it should be added that at Synetic Theater, relatively little of the acting is done by speaking and most by physical movements but in gesticulations, pantomime, dance, and grunts.
Managing Director Ben Cunis describes the “physical theater” approach of Synetic thus: “It is a form of theater in which the text is not the primary expressive element. Instead, the physical life on the stage tells the story — the movement of the actors, their expressions and gestures, dances and fights, the props, set, light, projections, sound, music…all of the other elements carry a heavier load.”
In the case of “The Tell-Tall Heart,” the intensity of this approach makes the tale all the more horrifying and mysterious, and thus this is not a performance recommended for small children. It is also extremely important to read the summary of the story provided in order to follow a narrative presented largely without words. Ironically, Edgar, the Old Man, and even a raven/vulture are shown reading books and devouring the words of texts—a feast to contemplate for devotees of reader response literary theory.
A particular moment that stands out is a carousel scene beginning with the protagonist winding up the music box playing the “Carousel Waltz,” the Richard Rogers tune from the musical “Carousel.” Vultures come out one by one in a rounded carousel motion, holding poles that mimic the ascending and descending poles of carousels. Each vulture has amusement park props such as circus stilts, cotton candy, and red balloons (one is reminded of Stephen King’s sinister “It” clown holding balloons). Does this suggest that all horror, fear, and even madness are linked irrevocably to bygone childhood?
The sets by props, scenic, and assistant scenic designers Claire Caverly, Daniel Pinha, and Stella Pugliesi respectively are responsible for sets that are evocative and straight out of a horror film, involving cobwebbed cubbyholes in elaborate bookcases that also serve as transitions between scenes. Or is it instead a dilapidated curio shop, where one finds music boxes, old gramophones, and antique items too dusty to recognize. Choreographer Irina Tsikuruishvili, music supervisor Irakli Kavsadze, and costume designer Erik Teague also come in for high praise due to the physical nature of the production where music and visuals often stand in for words to tell a story.
We recommend Synetic Theater’s “The Tell-Tale Heart” for its superb horror offering just in time for Halloween, but we also feel that the approach is intriguing in and of itself to merit a visit to this unusual Arlington theatre troupe. The performance runs approximately 100 minutes and plays through November 5.
