Nightfall with Edgar Allan Poe

Photos by Jeff and Heather Morris

Edgar-405

Curtain call.

Edgar Allan Poe offers a poem and some of his stories to demonstrate his sanity.	The Cast (order of appearance) Poe (Terrence Smith) Edgar (Braden Baker) Madeline Usher (Kym Henry) Roderick Usher (Levi Hays) The Raven (Jessica Osborn) Sante (Katie Hukill) Old Man (Lee Carter) Policeman 1 (David Potts) Policeman 2 (Gene Jacobs) Narrator (Gary Hillyer) Judge 1 (Marissa Dienstag) Judge 2 (Jason Miller) Soldier (Andrew Weed)

Poe mourns the loss of his lovely Lenore.	He hears an insistent tapping.

A sinister raven appears and mournfully repeats “Nevermore.”	Unsettled, Poe tries to reason with the raven, but can find no peace.

All is not well at the House of Usher.	On a visit, Edgar finds Roderick Usher in a state of deep melancholia and attempts to restore his friend's spirits by reading to him.

Roderick's sister, Madeline, is seen passing quickly through the hall without speaking. Shortly thereafter, Roderick tells Edgar that his sister has died.	After helping Roderick to inter her in a crypt deep under the house, Edgar raises the lid of Madeline's coffin for a final viewing.

Eerie sounds from below disturb Edgar's sleep.	Roderick is also agitated, and again Edgar reads to try to calm him by reading, but the awful sounds continue.

The door crashes open, and Madeline, bloody from her struggles to escape from the coffin, flings herself at Roderick.	With a final effort, Madeline strangles the brother who has buried her alive.

Edgar escapes as the House of Usher begins to crack at the seams before finally falling in dust and fire.	Sante is imprisoned in a dark cell with no means of escape.

After losing consciousness, she awakes to find that she is bound in the path of a razor-sharp pendulum that comes closer with each swing.	She escapes the deadly pendulum but almost falls to her death in a deep pit.

Rescue comes as randomly as her imprisonment.	Poe must care for a demanding old man with a sinister eye.

At the breaking point, Poe decides to sneak into the bedroom with his lamp shuttered and smother the old man in his sleep.	But, no matter how stealthily he enters, the old man always wakes up. Finally, Poe throttles him anyway and buries him under the floor.

Two policemen arrive to investigate a report of screams, and Poe invites them to sit in the very room where the murder occurred. He seems to hear the old man's heart beating from under the floorboards and cannot retain his composure.	Raving, Poe is escorted out of the house to live out the remainder of his days in an institution for the criminally insane.

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