Channeling Edgar Allan Poe at The Lakewood Playhouse

 

Hazel Bell, Chris Bailey, Lisa Twining Taylor and I went to watch Pacific NW actor Tim Hoban channel Edgar Allen Poe at the Lakewood Playhouse last night. What a show!

 

Mr. Hoban will perform it one more time (tonight, Saturday, October 19th at 7:30 pm) so if you’re local to Tacoma and see this in time, I hope you’ll take advantage of the opportunity. If you miss it, there will be other venues. Click on the link above to find them. The show is just $10 and worth far more than every red cent.

 

Getting to the theater last night was a bit of a Nightmare Before Halloween. With all  the rain we’re having, I-5 is flooded. It’s the main arterial through Tacoma and it and all side streets were jammed with automobiles trying to find their way around or through the flooded area, so I barely made it to the theater on time.

 

I think actor Hoban was in the same fix because John Munn, Acting Director of the Playhouse, reported to us that “Mr. Poe” experienced “carriage” problems on his way in so he was “composing” himself backstage (probably transforming himself from Hoban to Poe) and the show would get underway 15 minutes later than scheduled.

 

Everyone was okay with that because  even audience members were arriving late and feverishly entering the playhouse with apologies for their late arrival. “We’ve NEVER been late to a play before, EVER!!!”

 

Before the show officially got underway, Munn let us know that Mr. Poe was just three weeks away from dying (something unknown to Poe)…

 

When the lights went down, Mr. Edgar Allan Poe appeared from the  Pippi Longstocking stage set (an imminent delight for audiences of all ages at Lakewood Playhouse) to stand before us next to a period table that carried a teapot, a cup,  a small book, and several copies of what looked like  relatively thick volumes of a magazine he was intent on getting subscribers for.

 

From that moment on, the  evening was his. With one brief intermission, the “channeling” of Edgar Allan Poe lasted perhaps a little over an hour, all told. But in that brief span of time, we in the audience were transported into the presence of the noted poet, critic and commentator seemingly as if we’d been beamed back in time to sit before the man himself.

 

Poe jawed, raking Longfellow (and, to a lesser extent, Emerson) over the coals and bemoaning the dearth of appreciation for the great men among us here in 1800’s America who, although  literary unknowns, are every bit as memorable and praise-worthy as the pretenders in Europe–in fact, a great deal more praise-worthy, in his view!

 

Poe didn’t just read his works; he enacted The Tell-Tale Heart, transforming before our eyes from a seemingly objective narrator to a raving lunatic by the end.  He also enacted The Raven. A couple more of his literary gems were recited.

 

All the while, from time to time, Poe was trying to “sell” his literary magazine to various audience members, offering them cookies, peppering them (and the city of Lakewood) with compliments–telling us there were great men sitting right next to us, if only we would open our eyes and look around!– doing whatever he could to get enough prepaid subscriptions to make a go of his literary magazine!

 

Like Hal Holbrook with Mark Twain Tonight, Tim Hoban makes you feel as if you’ve had an audience with the great man himself.

 

And after the show, he was entirely amenable to posing with audience members so we could take home (and post all over social media) our evening in the presence of magnificent madness.

 

I have a feeling we’ll be making this an annual pilgrimage every October as witches and bats begin to their claim their territory in our hearts and minds.

 

It was an outstanding performance. I highly recommend it!