Buntport’s “Edgar Allan Poe is Dead and So Is My Cat”
There’s high brow, middle brow and low. And then there’s the often arched- brow shenanigans of Buntport.
In its latest, “Edgar Allan Poe Is Dead and So Is My Cat,” the wiseacre ( emphasis on “wise”) company of five mines a testy brother- sister relationship for laughs more than literary insights. That’s intentional, though, at their finest, they deliver both. But if you’re looking for a larky amusement, seek no further.
Things open on a funeral for a feline friend in Baltimore. In front of a brick facade, on a downward sloping lawn is a tiny rectangular hole, a mound of dirt nearby.
A man stands clad in a brown turtleneck, handsome dress shoes and colorful, rather tight boxer briefs. The pattern on them is the Baltimore Ravens’ logo. That port city is where the poet ( and, for that matter, the cat) of the title met their ends. The oddly clad man’s discarded suit rests on a pile of leaves. He purchased his suit— or as he intones with “get it? get it?” glee throughout the play, “another man’s suit”— at a thrift store.
The show’s program IDs this fellow, played with over- enunciating pleasure by Brian Colonna, as “That One Guy.” You don’t have long to wonder why. He’s that guy who repeats facts and factoids, that guy whose obsessive interests and hardly original insights demand constant affirmation.
Hannah Duggan plays His Sister, the bereaved. She’s not
happy that her brother keeps trying to turn the burial into a rite. He even invited His Best Friend ( Erik Edborg) to the underattended nonceremony.
That One Guy’s penchant for the pedantic isn’t the only thing exasperating his sister. He’s 40, and lives in her basement where he hosts a “Poedcast” on all things Edgar Allan Poe.
In addition to That Guy’s broadsides about Baltimore’s hardly native but very much adopted son, we learn facts about Tolstoy and a tidbit about a toymaker who presented Louis XIV with a particularly inventive mechanical toy.
The set is modest and effective. From the start, the latticed garden- level windows draw interest. The costumes— from the boxer briefs so tight they fit like a codpiece to the convincingly alive Suit to His Sister’s grey hoodie to the assorted Poe- related T- shirts are humorous in their own right.
Buntport has never feared traversing the space between silly and absurd. For instance, the sister’s brick home has no stairs, a head- scratch- er that makes for some fine slapstick exits.
Then there’s the matter of the suit. Redolent of Washington Irving’s Headless Horseman— but so much kinder, gentler, erudite— the suit is voiced by Erin Rollman.
There are moments when “Edgar Allan Poe” resembles an “SNL”— or more brainy Monty Python— sketch, but Buntport is always able to sustain its idea- buttressed lunacy. The troupe— with ace SamAnTha Schmitz behindthe- scenes— consistently works through its heady humor with hearty compassion. In fact, it aimed to deliver a decidedly not- Poe- like romp because there’s more than enough darkness out there.
The writing is often swift, the actor’s delivery even swifter. As the beleaguered Best Friend, Erik Ekborg captures the weird competitive need embedded in the notion of “best friend.” Like That Guy, he tries too avidly.
Early in the 90- minute show, the Suit remarks on its own presence: “It was always going to be awkward ... but I hope it was a little magical, I mean at least when I first got up. Or if not magical, I’d settle for surprising.” It was surprising— and magical.