Lights rise to the sound of an ebbing ocean tide as a woman clad in white runs, halts and stands, gasping for breath. A black box becomes a sheer cliff, overlooking the relentless surf as she stands at its lip, teetering precariously. She recites Poe’s famously melancholy line, “All that we see or seem/Is but a dream within a dream.” The lights fade, and the sound of the ocean diminishes.
Seconds later, the stage goes dark, and Coheed & Cambria’s “Welcome Home” shatters the resulting silence. This is the juxtaposition established in the first minutes of senior Adam Barron’s play Nevermore.
Barron began work on Nevermore in January of 2009. The eight-person show cleverly ties together six of writer Edgar Allen Poe’s most celebrated works with an original storyline of love, murder and revenge.
“The more I read the stories, the more I saw storylines,” Barron said. “I can pull these characters that unify all the stories.... That made me happier than anything else, knowing that Poe’s works could have central stories.”
The show itself predictably takes place in small, dimly lit areas, adding to the experience a feeling of intimacy that is more eerie than comforting. The atmosphere established by Poe’s work, Barron’s words, and the unnerving silences scattered throughout the play is well met for the upcoming Halloween weekend.
“It’s a great show—kind of scary,” said sophomore Kyle Glackin, who plays the comically sardonic Ringmaster Wind, one of the show’s principal characters. “It’s also funny. And it coincides with Halloween. I think people will enjoy this, but particularly students who know Poe. They don’t know him like this.”
Indeed, the show presents Poe’s work in a new and spooky light that is, somehow, hauntingly familiar. It captures the pain and insanity Poe was famous for putting down on paper, and mixes it with rock music and black lights. The climax of the show (and a must-see for Poe fans) is undoubtedly Barron’s adaption of “The Raven,” one of Poe’s most famous pieces as well as the source of the show’s title. The play also includes a rendition of “Annabel Lee,” distinctive for its inclusion of an original ballet featuring five white-masked phantoms.
“Everything about the show is really well thought,” sophomore Ophelia Chua said. “The entire cast and crew is really dedicated. Whatever you see here is people’s hearts put on stage.”
Nevermore runs tonight through Oct. 31 in Brody Theater on East Campus. Performances are at 8 and 11 p.m.