Fringe has turned literary with Murder on the Bare Stage, a collection of murder-themed poems either written or compiled by poet Magus Magnus and dramatically performed by actor Stephen Mead.
The dark collection includes pieces from Dickens and Macbeth, as well as a few original pieces. All dark. All about murder, or crime, or guilt. Arranged by Magus Magnus (Latin meaning “Great Wizard”), it’s a tight series of works that blend well together as a whole, while remaining accessible to the audience.
Excerpted from Magnus’ book Idylls for a Bare Stage, the ambitious piece seeks to teach a modern audience to appreciate, or at least better understand, the art of dramatic recitation so popular through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
The pieces are punctuated with commentary by Mead, who performs them all with about as much dramatic flair as possible. He is classically trained, and you can tell. His voice is rich and powerful when he uses it, though unfortunately he took to either yelling or screaming through entire extended chunks of text.
Murder on a Bare Stage
by Stephen Mead and Magus Magnus
60 minutes
at Caos on F
923 F Street NW
Washington, DC, 20004
Details and tickets
It was grating at times, and took away from those select moments that would have benefited from more specific dramatic escalation. It felt that he was working altogether too hard, as the texture to his voice was far more interesting than the volume.
But when Mead isn’t working too hard, when he allows himself to relax and connect with the audience, when he raises his eyes and lets himself be honest…we get a glimpse of a strong performer and some remarkable stories. It was during these fleeting moments that we saw what the dramatic recitation used to be. Yet the piece is ill-served in its design, with too much emphasis diverted towards Mead’s distracting and constantly shifting physicality, and away from the words he’s speaking.
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