DC: Fringe: Poe and all that Jazz

Poe and all that Jazz
written and directed by Peter Coy
Sidney Harman Hall – The Forum
610 F Street NW
Remaining performances:
None!

Description: Helen Hayes Award-winner playwright Peter Coy explores undercurrents of abandonment in Poe’s tragic personal life, thinly veiled in art. Horrifying and humorous, “a delicious, confusing, delicate, sensual delight”; jazz, ghosts, poetry and song. A phantasmagoric “dream within a dream-none of this is real” but it’s all true.

What do Edgar Allan Poe and Cole Porter have in common? Well, not much, but Poe and all that Jazz manages to make the association work. Jon Cobb (Poe) performs with a manic energy, an obsessive intensity. As Poe with a slight case of amnesia, he rediscovers his own life. Events are intertwined with Poe’s stories and poems until reality and fiction are no longer clear. Patti Finn portrays all the women in Poe’s life, all those that he loved and lost. She also breaks up the dark heaviness with her light renditions of jazz standards, supported by Bob Bennetta on piano and Jim Ryan on bass. It’s a combination that shouldn’t work but does, and what’s more, is a lot of fun.

4 stars

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