Deconstructing Edgar: ‘Nevermore’ Builds a Tragic Shell at OCC

He was abandoned by his father, orphaned by his tubercular mother and raised by a wealthy but emotionally miserly new father. Edgar Allan Poe then watched in horror as consumption continued to spirit away nearly everyone he loved, including his dear wife. In time he too was consumed--by grief and by alcohol.

Is it any wonder that Poe wrote as he did--turning out such exquisitely morbid tales of beauty cut down in its prime; of lives paralyzed by death’s swooping pendulum; of ravens quothing “nevermore”?

This is the premise of David Scaglione and George Almond’s “Nevermore” at Orange Coast College. To make their point, Scaglione, a part-time theater instructor there, and Almond, a former student, juxtapose autobiographical detail with passages from Poe’s stories, poems and literary reviews. It’s a worthy (if already well-explored) idea.

Problem is, the authors have constructed some parts of their story so clumsily--and have chosen, in some instances, such strange samples of Poe’s writing--that their enterprise falls as precipitously as the House of Usher.

Intentions also outstrip the student actors’ talents.

Events unfold in the delirium of Poe’s final hours on Oct. 7, 1849. Voices buzz in his mind: a gaggle of dreaded society types, who gossip about him from behind an eerily lit scrim, and his wife, who calls to him from her picture on the wall. (These are clever effects, but they are the only ones in this minimally staged production, and they become cheapened by overuse.)

The voices solidify into characters as Poe travels back through his life, revisiting people (his chilly adoptive father, his radiant wife, one of his fiercest literary rivals) and stories (“The Masque of the Red Death” and the poems “Annabel Lee” and “The Raven.”)

The juxtapositions often prove illuminating, and we believe the Poe character when he says that he writes about domestic horrors because he finds ordinary life “far more frightening” than anything in the run-of-the-mill world of ghosts and goblins. (The crazed killings in “The Black Cat” prove too gruesome for the stage, however.)

With ringlets falling into her unnaturally white, china-doll face, Kathy Hegland is a vision of loveliness as Poe’s wife, and she infuses the role with sweetness and sincerity. Michael L. Ruelas also distinguishes himself in a string of distinct characterizations, from Poe’s father to a friend of one of the doomed Ushers in “The Fall of the House of Usher.” As Poe, slight, dark-haired Chad Wood bears some resemblance to the writer but never makes the leap from mere line reading to genuine emotion.

Scaglione, who has staged his own script, evokes some images that serve the production well, such as the figures who ominously close in on the deteriorating Poe. Too often, however, Scaglione allows the staging to go limp with stasis. Without a vital, emotional core, the production remains more a literary critique than a gripping piece of theater.

BE THERE

“Nevermore,” Drama Lab Studio, Orange Coast College, 2701 Fairview Road, Costa Mesa. 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday, 2 and 7 p.m. Sunday. Ensd Sunday. $5 advance; $6 at the door. (714) 432-5640, Ext. 1. Running time: 1 hour, 55 minutes.