One Man Poe
Performed, directed and produced by Stephen Smith
Bread and Roses Theatre, 23 July 2026
Star rating: 4
Stephen Smith is a talented actor who has been developing and touring his one-man versions of Edgar Allan Poe’s gothic horror stories since the post-pandemic re-opening of theatres. He’s taken them across the world and to many venues in Britain, especially Edinburgh where he returns next month.
It was The Tell-Tale Heart and The Pit and the Pendulum at the performance I saw but there are others. He uses grown-up language, much of it taken directly from Poe and including wonderful turns of phrase such as “a cold sulphurous lustre”.
The Tell-Tale Heart presents a man who has just committed a chillingly pre-meditated murder and describes in great detail exactly how he did it. Smith speaks in enunciated RP and gazes at the audience, his eyes made cadaverous by make up and lighting. His physicality is powerful and his facial expressions eloquently manic. Of course the character is deranged and this story, and Smith’s account of it, explore the psychology of madness.
The Pit and the Pendulum is a more familiar story in which a man is condemned to the nastiest death the monks can dream up in Toledo during the Spanish Inquisition. After a spell in darkness he is strapped down to that he has to watch a razor sharp pendulum swinging across the prison, slowly getting lower and closer, knowing that it will eventually slice him into shreds. Smith gets the horror, raw fear, filth and rats very convincingly. Neither of these are ghost stories or, in themselves,”scary” Rather they investigate how the human mind works when it’s under extreme stress and that’s both gruelling and horrifying.
Smith performs them as a single show with only a brief pause in the middle while he changes clothes and make-up in the half light. I especially admired the way he uses a subtly different accent for each character – and of course, both are a long way from his natural speaking voice which we heard at the end when he thanked the audience for coming and plugged his next two London shows which feature different stories.
Catch One Man Poe at Barons Court Theatre on 26 July or Old Red Lion Playhouse on 31 July.
