Review by James Wilkinson

‘My Fascination with Creepy Ladies: A collection of horrors by Edgar Allan Poe’ – Conceived, adapted and directed by Bryn Boice. Devised by Anthem Theatre Company. Costume Design: Theona White. Lighting Design: Bridget K. Doyle. Presented by Anthem Theatre Company at the Boston Center for the Arts Plaza Black Box Theatre, 539 Tremont St., Boston through November 3, 2019.

When seeing shows to review I typically try to keep my notebook in my bag until the show is over. However, while waiting for Anthem Theatre Company’s production of My Fascination with Creepy Ladies to begin, there was a detail in the theater that caught my attention and seemed worth breaking this rule for the sake of remembrance. A song with an electronic synthesizer sound and a pulsating drum machine beat (what other decade could it be from but the 1980s?) was coming out of the theater sound system. It seemed an odd choice for a play that was going to be diving into the dark abyss that is the work of Edgar Allan Poe. Then I listened a bit closer and caught some of the lyrics. Nestled within that hypnotic beat, the singer chants out, “And I want you/And I want you/And I want so/It’s an obsession.” A Google search later that night revealed the singer to be Annie Lennox of the Eurythmics, the song, “Love is a Stranger.” I’ll leave you to look the rest up, but suffice to say, when Lennox starts howling the lines “Love is a danger/of a different kind/To take you away/And leave you far behind” you start to understand its placement in relation to Poe’s work. That a darker tale of obsession is hidden within a pop song connects with the cheeky title of Anthem Theatre gives its production.

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