21st Century Poe: Falling For The Ushers
Blood And Stone: A Lullaby For Elizabeth Bathory
Anyway, here's the press release:
21st.
CENTURY POE: FALLING FOR THE USHERS
London
Horror Festival
19.30,
31st. October 2013, Etcetera Theatre, Camden (Tickets £10)
Marty Ross (BBC Radio
horror; Doctor Who audio) drags Edgar Allan kicking & screaming into the
modern world – just in time for Halloween & the London Horror Festival!
In the horror tales
of Edgar Allan Poe, the same opening note is struck again and again: an
isolated, tormented narrator wants – needs! – to tell us of his strange
experiences. They are ideally suited, therefore, to contemporary theatre’s
great comeback kid, the most ancient and suddenly most modern form of narrative
theatre: live storytelling. But Marty Ross, a storytelling ‘modernist’ keen to
shift this resurgent form away from backward looking quaintness, has no intention
of presenting Poe’s stories as period pieces: rather he radically updates them
to our era – shifting the setting to his native Glasgow. Fresh from critical
raves and full houses for three of his 21st. Century Poe stories at
this year’s Edinburgh Fringe, Ross now brings his reinvention of Poe’s most
famous tale to the London Horror Festival – on Halloween!
Well established as a
playwright, particularly with dark drama for BBC radio (Ghost Zone, Catch My
Breath, Darker Side Of The Border, this month’s Lady Macbeth Of Mtsensk), plus
Doctor Who & award-nominated Dark Shadows audio drama, as well as Blood And
Stone, nominated for a 2012 Rondo Award (horror fandom’s Oscars) and also
presented at this year’s London Horror Festival
(Oct 30th), Marty Ross onstage is a whole dramatis personae in himself, using expressionistic mime and
gesture as well as evocative words, shifting fluidly between the strange and troubling
characters of his story - in which haunted, incestuous twins Roderick and
Madeline Usher have left behind the misty gothic manor of the Poe tale to
become superstars of the contemporary art world, thanks to their macabre
conceptual installations in the manner of Damien Hirst and the Chapman Bros.
But when Madeline’s old art school admirer Ed shows up, their tragic fall is as
inescapable as ever….
Critics at the
Edinburgh Fringe knew they had seen something special. Now London can see how cutting
edge this most traditional form of theatre can be….
“Insanely good
storytelling… a master craftsman who never turns down the pressure… Ross’
violently impressive performance make this a heart-pounding triumph…
Trainspotting meets gothic horror….” – Broadway Baby *****
“Ross has a great
aptitude for suspense and terror, and he hurls himself into his tale with
energy and passion, in words which ring with Glasgow rhythm. An accomplished
piece of work… a chilling conclusion.” – The Scotsman
“Visceral. A
compelling narrator and onstage presence. … left you thinking as well as
reeling… theatre that kept you on edge… an immensely entertaining ride that
scared and shocked in equal measure – a fair ground ghost ride for the 21st
Century….” – Fringe Review
“…What Marty Ross
does with literature’s most mystical and macabre works is make them sing with
new energy and beguile an audience all over again…. poetically re-worked ‘The
Fall of the House of Usher’ manages, in its modernisation, to preserve and
revere the original, even intensifying its impact… a bewitchingly good story
that leaves a haunting reminder long after the lights have gone down.” - 3
Weeks ****
Festival website:
http://www.londonhorrorfestival.com/whats-on/21st-century-poe-falling-for-the-ushers/
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