Phillyist Reviews... Haunted Poe

Meredith Boring with Dave Johnson as Edgar Allan Poe in Brat Productions' Haunted Poe, through November 1
at 38 Jackson Street in South Philadelphia. Photo by Karl Seifert.

When I was thirteen, my friends and I went to a haunted maze at the mall. I was so annoyed by the end, with the predictable gimmicks and cheap thrills, that when Freddy Kreuger jumped out at me a few feet from the exit I may or may not have punched him in the face. (The statute of limitations on assault has passed by now, right?) That wasn't the only time time I'd found myself decidedly unimpressed, or even annoyed, by a haunted maze, so I'll admit that I was a bit skeptical about Brat Productions' Haunted Poe, a sort of theatrical house of horrors, all centered on the life and work of a little-known writer by the name of Edgar Allan Poe.

Thank you, Brat, for proving me wrong. Haunted Poe is forty-five minutes of thrills and chills that never, not once, annoyed me—and more than once made me scream. From demented puppets to the living dead to more cockroaches than you ever wanted to see at one time, this show proves to be the perfect tribute to Edgar Allan Poe and the macabre stories he told.

But you don't have to be a Poe aficionado to appreciate the production. Sure, it helps you to get your bearings, at times, to realize that you're in the middle of "The Masque of the Red Death," and therefore your break from the morbid is only temporary, or to recognize the opening lines of "Annabelle Lee," although they're being sung, but so long as you remember "The Raven"—and perhaps "The Tell-Tale Heart"—from middle school English, you'll be able to situate yourself in Haunted Poe just fine.

Faint of heart need not apply: there are jump-scenes aplenty, and even those moments where you don't find yourself startled by what's around the next corner, you'll till be decidedly on edge for most of the time you're in the maze. A few moments of respite do exist, most notably when "Poe's ghost" recites "The Raven" to the audience, packed into a tiny room wallpapered with old books, but on the whole, if you're the kind of person who can't sit through a scary movie without being reduced to a puddle on the floor of the movie theatre, this is not the ticket for you. Go see Rocky Horror instead—there's always a production or two during October—and leave the limited number of tickets available for Haunted Poe to the grown-ups.