The Giant and I Attend a Play

This entry is going to be much more like a diary than a blog. It is simply an event that I am fond of that I’d like to remember, and it has no hidden meaning or moral lessons. Just enjoy!

Last night (October 3^rd) I went to a play with my Giant, “The Madness of Edgar Allan Poe: A Love Story.” The actors were (mostly) fantastic, but the content of the play was not my cup of tea. It had parts that really annoyed me (Poe’s repetition of the word “bells” [that was said in such a Southern dialect that I couldn’t quite decipher if “bells” was actually what he was going for] at the end of each string of nonsensical thought, and his incessant attempts to rhyme almost every word in the sentence for the first 10 minutes of the opening scene), and parts that totally blew me away.

Unfortunately, I almost ruined one of those “blow me away” moments because my Giant was too busy being awkward in the front row for me to pay attention.

This was not your average play. Instead of spending our time in an auditorium watching the play on a stage, we actually followed the actors from room to room of a mansion. At the end of each scene a woman in 19^th century garb would signal for us to stand up, and then lead us to the next scene. Each scene was from a different work (The Tell-Tale Heart, The Masque of the Red Death, The Raven, Lenore, Annabel Lee, etc.), and it showed quite clearly how Poe’s love for his wife, Virginia, constantly spilled over into his work. Also, the audience was split up into two groups, so it really confused me when the two leads, Virginia and Poe, ended up in the same scene; I wondered what the hell the other half of the audience could possibly be watching without them.

I figured this out toward the end of the play. We followed a gentleman dressed up as an officer toward a small room with three rows of chairs. He told us to fill in each row to the end, so the Giant and I followed the people in front of us down the first row of chairs, and plopped down. Unfortunately, three feet in front of my Giant was the edge of a bed which left barely any room for the actors to walk by with the Giant’s knees sticking out two feet. Not only this, but at one point the actor sat down on that edge of the bed, looked straight at my Giant, got this look of deep love soaked in madness about his face, and said the most comical line in The Tell-Tale Heart: “I loved the old man.”

The Giant swears that he only smiled because I laughed, but I told him I only laughed because I saw him starting to smile. You can’t look at my Giant, all uncomfortable in the front row (not only emotionally, but physically because he was trying so hard to move his legs out of the way that I could feel them shaking), and say with a crazed look in your eye, “I loved the old man,” and not expect me to laugh. It was one short chuckle, and then I bit down on my bottom lip so hard that it was no longer tempting to laugh. I’m glad I did that, because this actor’s performance was amazing, which we both agreed upon at the end of the night when we were driving home, laughing about that moment.

I think the Giant and I will probably stick to movies in the future, where there’s no real chance for uncomfortable laughter to ruin a scene when an actor says something loopy and then holds your gaze for too long.