A Quick Visit with ‘Poe’s Ghosts’

Edgar Allan Poe always believed in cutting to the chase. Save for one little-loved novel, the author trafficked in short stories and even shorter poems, contending that literature is most effective when it can be consumed in a single sitting. (“If two sittings be required,” he warned, “the affairs of the world interfere.”) No doubt, then, Poe would have appreciated Cooperative Performance Milwaukee’s new program of his works. Staged at Shaker’s, a historic Walker’s Point cigar bar that, if its many haunted tours are to be believed, is a magnet for the supernatural, Poe’s Ghosts speeds through four of the poet’s most macabre tales, including the October staples The Raven and The Tell-Tale Heart. The whole experience clocks in at less time than a “Seinfeld” rerun.

Director Don Russell serves as the evening’s MC and a pied piper of sorts, guiding the audience with a concertina through three levels of the smoky bar and its chilly adjoining living space, reputedly a former brothel. The night’s primary poet, Zach McLain, carries the weight of the program, never tripping over Poe’s gothic prose even as the pace and intensity of the storytelling send him into an ever-deepening sweat. He’s aided by a trio of players who underscore his tales of madness with flashlights, shadow puppets and motion. Eschewing the padding that Poe abhorred, Poe’s Ghosts works fast, building tension and momentum until its readings reach their inevitable, abrupt end. And although the program ends too soon, so too, Poe’s works remind us again and again, does life itself.

Through Nov. 1. For tickets, visit cooperformke.com.