I don’t know what to make of Red-Eye to Havre de
Grace so perhaps it’s best I don’t try reading too deeply.
Its theatrical vocabulary is neither that of play, play-with-music nor musical,
but rather that of the most elusive and ambiguous category of all, music (not musical; music)
theatre. A rumination on the last days of Edgar Allan Poe, it
purports to dramatize what happened to him in the unknown, undocumented window
of days during which he was on a train trip to New York, found himself
mysteriously rerouted to Baltimore, was discovered in dire condition on the
street and rushed to Washington hospital, where he died, delirious.
But
it really doesn’t dramatize, it offers an impressionistic rumination with a
specially designed prop (a table which, upended, becomes a versatile door), a
ballet dancer to represent the young bride Poe lost to illness (Alessandra
L. Larson), an actor to portray an increasingly
incomprehensible Poe (Ean Sheehy), a musician to keep live
underscoring going (David Wilhelm) and—the piece’s most
inspired element—a fellow who gives every impression of being a genuine
tour-guide and official of the Poe museum in Richmond (Jeremy Wilhelm) and
when you least expect it, insinuates himself into the proceedings to provide
vocals, additional instrumental accompaniment and incidental characters.
I
can’t honestly say this kind of theatre isn’t really my métier, because music
theatre is amorphous, each production creates its own rules and its own
environment; and where minimalist repetition in one may seem tiresome, in
another it can be invigorating. Context and treatment provide half the
rationale for a response; your own sensibility provides the rest.
I
can—I think, maybe—identify when a piece I don’t ultimately
have an affinity for is nonetheless presented with the kind of distinction that
makes it notable…and Red Eye to Havre de Grace seems to
be one of those.
Beyond
that, its ability to fulfill its initial stylistic and subject-matter promise
seemed as elusive to me as the circumstances surrounding the death of its hero.
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