NEVERMORE
CBC Profile

Who can blame them, when Poe left behind so many tantalizing clues to his own psychology, as well as some genuine mysteries – in particular, the circumstances surrounding his pathetic and untimely death at the age of 40?

"His life is almost stranger and more intriguing than his work," says Jonathan Christenson, the writer, director and composer of Nevermore, a new musical play about Poe. The show, currently playing at Edmonton's Catalyst Theatre, is a fantasia that treats Poe's life story like one of his own gloomy tales.

"He struggled so deeply with these demons of despair," Christenson says in a recent phone interview from the Catalyst offices. "There seems to be this constant through-line in his life of being almost literally pulled into the grave."

Poe, who wrote such morbid masterpieces as The Pit and the Pendulum and The Cask of Amontillado, lived in the shadow of death and disaster – some of it self-inflicted. Born in Boston in 1809, he was orphaned at the age of three, having watched his young mother die of tuberculosis. Adopted by a rich merchant who would later disown him, Poe spent his adulthood trying to scratch out a living as a journalist and hack. His few successes – some prize-winning stories, the massive popularity of his poem The Raven – were dampened by grinding poverty, alcoholism and the death of his adored cousin-cum-wife, Virginia. Like his mother, she contracted TB and died young.

Poe outlived his wife by only two years. In the autumn of 1849, he disappeared in Baltimore on what is presumed to be a drinking spree. He turned up a week later, dirty and delirious, dying shortly afterward in a hospital. After his death, Poe's literary rival, Rufus Griswold, wrote a slanderous obituary and subsequent memoir that portrayed the author as a debauched madman.

Griswold's damning portrait "dictated the way that people came to see Poe for many years," Christenson says. Modern biographies have replaced Griswold's hatchet job with a more sympathetic picture. To some degree, Poe was innocent and idealistic, notes Christenson. "He had a tremendous spirit of hope – he had to in order to survive as long as he did."

Christenson sees Poe as primarily a passive figure, a conduit for experience. Nevermore – which takes its title from The Raven's haunting refrain – focuses on the people who shaped his destiny, from his adoptive parents John and Fanny Allan, to his wastrel older brother Henry, to the doomed Virginia, who married Poe when she was only 13. "We're looking at the way they impacted on him, the way they shaped his imagination and the way he used that imagination to re-interpret them in his stories and poems," Christenson says.

The play's surreal plot weaves in extracts and references to such classic tales as The Tell-Tale Heart, The Fall of the House of Usher (Poe's most famous account of premature burial); Ligeia and Berenice, which features two of gothic literature's original "corpse brides"; and that prototype of the whodunit, The Murders in the Rue Morgue. Nuggets of Poe's lyrical poetry are strewn through Christenson's dialogue, which is written mostly in rhyming verse and both sung and spoken by the actors.

Christenson says the rhymes bring a touch of levity to the show, in keeping with Poe's nature. Although he's remembered for his macabre and melancholy writing, Poe also penned satires, grotesque comedies and parodies of the very gothic genre that he excelled in. Ackroyd, among others, has suggested that even Poe's most horrific works may have been coolly calculated for the marketplace.

Christenson isn't quite that cynical. "[Poe's] writing comes from a pretty deep, visceral place," he says. "It's a balance of technical virtuosity and a raw inner voice that emerges through the work."

Anyone dramatizing the life of Poe faces a challenge when it comes to depicting his mysterious death. The author's last days have been the subject of endless speculation and investigation, and theories of what killed him range from diabetes to rabies to (perhaps most likely) the ravages of alcoholism. There have even been fictional theses – most recently, Matthew Pearl's 2006 historical novel The Poe Shadow. Christenson says he resisted the temptation to provide a solution. "In the end, I felt that I wanted to leave it a mystery," he says. "Poe's writing is so much about the role of the inexplicable in our lives, so it seemed a contradiction to me to try to explain what happened to him."

Nevermore is Christenson's second visit to the realms of vintage horror. His previous play at Catalyst – where he's been artistic director since 1996 – was a multi-award-winning adaptation of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. That show has been touring since its 2006 debut. Nevermore will join it on the road next month, playing at Ottawa's Magnetic North Theatre Festival and Toronto's Luminato fete. At Luminato, it will be part of a series of Poe-oriented programs marking the 200th anniversary of the author's birth. They include A Poe Cabaret: A Dream Within a Dream, featuring musical works inspired by his writing; animated films of his poems and tales; and readings by contemporary gothic writers like Patrick McGrath.

Anniversary aside, Christenson believes it's a good time to be revisiting Poe. He feels the author's dark oeuvre speaks to the current global upheaval.

"We live in a time right now where we've had this notion that we have a tremendous amount of control over our lives and our destinies and the world around us," he says. "Horror reminds us that the irrational, the inexplicable, a world of chaos that we can't control, is always lurking just below the surface. And with Poe, I don't think I've come across another writer whose works so consistently and wholeheartedly express that."

Nevermore: The Imaginary Life and Mysterious Death of Edgar Allan Poe runs at Vancouver's Arts Club Theatre as part of the 2010 Cultural Olympiad, Jan. 25-Feb. 6.

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