• The Fall of the House of Usher
• Untitled Page
• Untitled Page 3
• Untitled Page 2
• About
• Press
• Inquiries
• Music

The Fall of the House of Usher

reviewed by Michael Mraz
Aug 15, 2009
In Brent Cirves's musical adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe's The Fall of the House of Usher, there is a song, "Nothing Beautiful Is Simple." It is the mantra of the characters at the center of this dark piece; the Family Usher descends deeper and deeper into darkness and insanity, much like their castle, literally sinking into the ground year after year. Playing a short engagement at the Connelly Theatre at this year's NY Fringe Festival, Cirves's production, with a gorgeous haunting score by Mike Johnson, is a beautiful, complex portrait of love, death, and madness and the people caught in the whirlwind of the House of Usher.
Poe's stories are re-imagined by Cirves through the eye of balladeer William Reed. He recounts memories of his stay at the home of Roderick and Madeline Usher. Reed, a traveling busker, meets and befriends the eccentric prospective composer Roderick on the NYC streets and is taken back to his house. There he meets Roderick's equally peculiar sister, Madeline—who falls instantly in love with William—and Roderick's lady love, Annabel Lee (of Poe's famous poem), whom William begins to fall for.
All share their love of music, holding competitions to compose the best songs, but from the beginning, it is obvious that something dark is amiss. The House of Usher seems to have a magnetic, supernatural pull, compelling its inhabitants to stay. And Madeline and Roderick themselves seem far from normal and are harboring some grisly secrets.
Cirves's script starts out fairly solid and gets deeper and more nuanced as the play progresses. The musical numbers flow nicely with the plot, as song grow more out of the characters actually playing music than the "ordinary people break out in song" approach. Mike Johnson's score actually tends to contradict the title "Nothing Beautiful Is Simple," as many of his best moments in the play come when Reed simply sings while accompanying himself on classical guitar. The reprise of "The Ballad of Annabel Lee" is beautifully composed. Laura Cirves's costumes fit the period well and the set does a great job of representing the cavernous house even with FringeNYC limitations.
The cast is very consistent, all with strong voices and acting chops to match. Particularly standing out is Mark Rascati, playing Reed, who delivers a nice, subtle performance and has a beautiful folk voice to go along with his classical guitar skills. He's a bit inconsistent on his Southern accent but the performance is strong enough that this barely matters. C.J. Bergin and Mary Myers, as Roderick and Madeline respectively, get better and better as their descent to madness deepens.
The Fall of the House of Usher ends up having the feel of a dark fairy tale, told through minstrel's song. Cirves's production is compelling with more than a few nice moments of creepiness and horror injected in. It is both lyrical, yet gruesome; which seems to me like the way Poe would have wanted his vision presented.



http://jbspins.blogspot.com/2009/08/fringe-09-fall-of-house-of-usher.html


Fringe ’09: Fall of the House of Usher

Madness, consumption, and premature burial are familiar topics to Poe scholars, but not typical musical theater motifs. However,FringeNYC is now officially underway, offering patrons an opportunity to see a plethora of fresh new shows, including Brent Cirves’s musical adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher.

In addition to the ill-fated Roderick and Madeline Usher, Annabel Lee, the beautiful subject of Poe’s final poem who indeed died tragically young, also plays an important role in Cirves’s book. She is now part of the reclusive Usher household—Roderick’s common law wife to be exact. Though she charms their visitor, one William Reed, a wayfaring musician Roderick befriended, her constitution is alarmingly weak.

Still, in a clear departure from the source story, the House of Usher initially appears to be a reasonably healthy environment, as recalled in flashbacks by Reed on the anniversary of those fateful events. Annabel Lee and the Usher siblings all seem like friendly, musically talented young people. Yet when the poetically foretold tragedies start to strike, the Usher family’s deep psychological pathologies begin to manifest themselves.

Despite taking liberties with the Usher text, Cirves’s clever book should intrigue Poe fans, compellingly integrating Annabel Lee, both as a character and setting elements of the classic poem to music. Indeed, the frequently recurring “Annabel Lee” motif is quite haunting, in a bittersweet way. Cirves’s original lyrics are also quite memorable, evoking the fleetingness of love and beauty which preoccupied Poe’s verse. They are effectively complimented by Mike Johnson’s music, suggesting the sort of love ballads and folk shanties that would be the stock-in-trade of an itinerant 1830’s minstrel, like Reed. He also contributes some unsettling avant-gardish classical pieces to suggest the hubris and madness of Roderick Usher.

All four cast principles have pleasing voices which sound well suited to the Poe-inspired lyrics. Carolyn and Mary Myers give particularly impressive vocal turns as Annabel Lee and Madeline Usher, respectively. As Reed, Mark Rascati smoothly handles the expository duties and also displays a nice

touch on the acoustic guitar. They are accompanied by a sympathetic pit band, including pianist Simon Sun and flutist Rachelle Hunt, who capably synch the mimed on-stage performances.

Usher is a smartly conceived mélange of the Poe canon that is surprisingly engaging on an emotional level. Though the gothic spirit of the story remains, becoming especially pronounced in the second act, it is the elegiac tone of Poe’s poem that truly predominates in this staging. It is one of the more satisfying adaptations of classic genre fiction to be produced on the New York stage in recent months. Now open, it runs at the Connelly Theater through August 19th as part of Fringe Fest.