The House at Poe Corner: tales of unbearable despair, terror, blunder beasts and bumble goo
16 Apr 2024 - Photos by Adrianna Prosser

On a gloomy Saturday night, the unlucky thirteenth day of the month, with overcast skies threatening to spit rain or worse, I set out for a night of supposed elucidation and edification at the theatre. On the way I was the unwilling victim of an attempted mastication by a ferocious dog, assailed by endless reportage of war and massacres around the world, and lost a tragic amount of time tangled in the malfeasance of the TTC. I stumbled to Eldritch Theatre's Redsandcastle Theatre door just in time, was able to obtain a seat and settle in just as the lights dimmed and The House at Poe Corner began with "And now unfortunate friends . . ."

Like many whose childhoods were spent in solitary, sometimes by choice, pursuits, I grew up on the tales of AA Milne and Edgar Allan Poe. It just never occurred to me to utter the two names in the same breath, let alone allow the innocent toys of Christopher Robin to wander into the dark tortured environs of the House of Usher. Fortunately Eric Woolfe (MacBeth: A Tale Told by an Idiot, Doctor Weathergloom's Here There Be Monsters, As You Like It) and Michael O'Brien did conceive of such a dastardly and diabolical mash-up. And had the nerve, verve and wily wit to set it to paper so that Woolfe, Mairi Babb (Inge(new) - In Search of a Musical) and a 'cabal' of demonic puppets could bring the stitched together nasty narratives to life. The results are gory, outrageously strange and utterly hilarious. 

Everyone who has ever mutilated a childhood toy either through attempts at improvement, vengeance or exorcism, will wince in wonder as the thinly disguised and formerly beloved characters wreak murder and mayhem upon each other. And unmurder. It is very important that characters be able to die horribly and in torturous pain repeatedly. Unlike Psycho, a major plot point which the first dire tale borrows to horrific and shocking effect, the bodies do not remain buried. While gleefully transforming familiar literary masterpieces into theatrical abominations, HP Lovecraft is also ripped off, and the spectre of the Blunder Beast looms over the proceedings like the darkest and dankest of clouds of pestilence, Cthulu or heffalumps. Woolfe and O'Brien have a deep abiding love for the melliferous and melodious multi-syllable words that Poe, Lovecraft, and occasionally Milne, were found of using. The atmosphere reeks of literary pretension and oratory overkill lampooned to die and rot in a cluttered corner. Accompanied to its demise by mocking laughter and delighted disdain with a frisson of actual antiquated terror.

The characters are as recognizable as are the manipulated plots. The characters, the toys (and they are remarkable from their bloodshot eyes to inspired choreography), have been gripped with deep melancholy ever since Mr Usher left the haunted woods of Wyrd. Poe the Bear is always in search of delicious bumble-goo and Glumhoof the Mule is indeed glum, wallowing in never ending, and in song, despair. Cutlet, the tiny pig with a big knife, gets embroiled in the tale of The Tell-Tale Tail before all, living, dead, murdered and unmurdered, set off to conquer the Blunder Beast. Even the mummified Walla who expired from, I think, a touch of the red death. Yes, the references are fast and furious and sometimes so clever, or strained, as to detract from the atmosphere of eeriness and dread. When one's brain engages, congratulates itself for doing its job of making basic connections between disparate items, the fog briefly evaporates and one admires rather than experiences. Fortunately there is immediately another dark tale, grim warble, hideous act of puppet on puppet violence, mysterious magic trick, or stentorian threats to tell a tale that will literally frighten us to death, to distract us back to the dastardly doings actually before us on the stage...

And that seems to be the point. There are brief, very brief, flashes of metaphysical thought that poke out of the carnage. Woolfe's Edgar, who speaks in an inexplicable but fetching southern accent, shakes in constant fear of what is to come next. And what he is inflicting on the audience. Babb's Allan, competitive both vocally and for attention, twitches with his conflicting emotions and internal terrors. They discuss and debate the value of experiencing terror in a pure distilled form as a way of processing it, dealing with it. The world is a horrible, bleak place and only by facing that can we exist in a fragile cognitive dissonance long enough to survive with fragments of our sanity left. The House at Poe Corner flays those terrors alive and splays them across the stage. Our childhood icons turned from creatures of comfort to carnivorous cannibalistic fiends who suffer unspeakable fates. It would be incredibly cathartic if it weren't so utterly absurd and uproariously hilarious. I exited the theatre edified, the teeth marks on my arm no longer throbbing, the threat of global annihilation tucked away in the recesses of my cranium, and the travails of the TTC home a conquerable chore. Not elucidated but infinitely entertained and briefly, oh so briefly, at peace.